BrosTrend 650Mbps Linux Compatible WiFi Adapter Supports Kali Linux, Ubuntu, Mint, Debian, Kubuntu, Zorin, PureOS, Raspberry Pi 2+, Windows, Dual Band USB Wireless Adapter w/ Long Range WiFi Antenna

I don't usually write product reviews but this BrosTrends wifi adaptor deserves one. I am assembling a new desktop computer to dual boot Win11 and Linux Debian. A new motherboard with a Wifi-7 chip on board. Works great for Win but no drivers available for Linux. Thus the need for a USB wifi adaptor. This is the fourth usb adaptor I purchased. The other three....no Linux drivers.So, I selected this AC5L adaptor because the description said it "works with Linux". If you are considering one of these because of the "works with Linux", go to BrosTrends website to verify that your particular Linux distribution is shown as compatible. Most are but there are some aren't yet compatible. As these drivers make it into more kernels, I believe more and more distributions will work with this adapter.So, I received this late Friday afternoon and began the installation and testing. Win11 setup was easy and it connected to my router. In Linux it was not immediately recognized. After doing all that I knew how to do, I decided to contact their Customer Service. This was about 10:00 pm Friday evening. I expected to get a response Monday or Tuesday. I got a response in about 10 minutes! I followed their instructions, we emailed back and forth a few times and by Saturday noon it was working just like I wanted. BrosTrend Customer Service is the best I have ever worked with.Now, for you guys who bought an 870e Crosshair Hero motherboard and are finding out the wifi-7 onboard will not work with Linux, this adapter is a nice workaround.By the way, my installation is working fine with Secure Boot and Fast Boot enabled.A big THANK YOU to the BrosTrend customer service team that helped me!

Works perfectly with raspberry pi with no setup need. Monitor mode also works well.

Yes, this antenna worked on a recent Linux Mint installation. Mint found the right driver, so essentially no effort to set up.

Only reason that I did not rate 5-star is the build quality is not great. It gets good signal in my outside shed around 50ft away from my house on my 2.4GHz channel. Download speed around 15-20Mbps. Streams YouTube videos fine, which is what I use the computer for. I didn't feel like creating a key for secure boot to work, so I had to disable secure boot in order for the driver to install which I'm ok with. It wouldn't connect using WPA3 Wi-Fi security, so I had to use WPA2 encryption (other devices on my network utilize WPA3). Make sure you have an ethernet port on your computer to install the driver online, I wish there was a driver installer on the instruction disc that came with the adapter so that internet connection isn't required. The reason why I bought the adapter is because I do not have ethernet where I plan to use the computer and a driver installer on the disc would have been nice. The antenna only pivots 90 degrees on one axis, luckily, I could turn it in a good direction on my PC. There are some helpful instructions on their website. It works as intended, so overall I'm satisfied.

Advertised as working with various distributions of Linux. What this should mean is that the hardware is recognized by drivers shipped by default with the Linux kernel. I bought this brand in spite of it being frequently returned because it advertised being specifically Linux compatible. It arrived today, but was not recognized by my stock and recent Ubuntu system. The instructions shipped with the item told me to go to their website to download the Linux driver - not what was advertised. I did go to the website, but they had no download available - only another copy of instructions telling me to go to the same website.

I installed this on a Zima single board computer that is running OpenMediaVault on a Debian distro. I followed the instructions on the included installation guide card that came in the package. The install went without issues and it works great. This solved a backup issue for a wifi connected laptop. So far it is very stable and has a good transfer rate (I have not measured it, but it is on par with expectations for the time it takes.)Update: This suddenly stopped working on my OpenMediaVault installation. I have done everything I can to get it working, including wiping and reinstalling the OMV distro. No luck. I tested it on a windows laptop and it worked great. So, am not sure what the issue is, but I don't think it's the Wifi device. So, just be aware.2nd Update: I reinstalled the driver (linux.brostrend.com) and got an error. Per the instructions on their troubleshooting page, I ran dpkg --configure -a This corrected the issue and it is working perfectly again. I can only assume an update to my OMV instance caused the issue, not the BrosTrend WiFi adapter.

This product worked fine out of the box. Due to a config issue from previous wifi adapter I go confused on my Linux wifi config page. When down unneeded path and downloaded, compiled, and installed the Linux kernel module for this adapter. Vendors docs had an easy to follow steps to do this.At same time I reached out to support with questions and their response was fast and to folks who could answer more technical questions since I am an older embedded software engineer. From this discussion I soon realized the unneeded path I took (but no harm since I now had the latest kernel module), but more importantly they showed me something new I did not know about Linux wifi config. This came in use the next time I saw the issue and understood it cause.Their support response was above and beyond what I have come to expect, and it is much appreciated.