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I have just installed Chromium OS on an old 32bit Samsung N130 netbook. I used the latest 32bit image (60.0.3112.102) from Arnold the Bat.

Using the lscpi command , I found that it has the Realtek RTL8192E/RTL8192SE Wifi NIC which is listed as supported in the release notes.

When I try to switch the wifi on using the normal settings it just doesn't go on.

Having looked into this, I found that this chipset had given problems for people with this laptop before in other Linux distributions. I have encountered similar problems in the past trying to get Broadcom WiFi to work when installing Ubuntu or Debian on older Apple hardware and it could be fixed by installing an application to extract the firmware and install it e.g fwcutter

I know that Chromium OS is Gentoo-based and I do not know the best way to proceed to check if the right driver is installed and to make sure that the wifi can be activated. I have read that Gentoo is for more advanced users and I miss apt-get!

When I next get the chance, I will try installing Ubuntu, saving the /lib/firmware folder and then reinstall Chromium and merge the firmware folder with the Ubuntu one. It might work...

Following the advice from Emmanuel Rosa below: screenshot as copy/paste didn't work

Trying to emerge/install linux-firmware...enter image description here

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    First, check to see if the module for the WIFI card is loaded. Something like this: lsmod | grep rtl Then check if firmware has been loaded for the NIC: dmesg | grep rtl Commented Feb 13, 2019 at 11:17
  • It looks like it has loaded the firmware but the wifi won't turn on via the settings. Is there a "modprobe" type command that would switch the wifi on? Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 11:05
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    If the firmware loaded you'd see a message in dmesg that looks something like this: rtl8192se 0000:02:00.0: loaded firmware Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 18:21
  • So it has found the device but not not loaded the firmware? Is it possible to load it manually on this distro? Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 19:11
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    Correct. The Gentoo package sys-kernel/linux-firmware has the firmware for the rtl8192se. Assuming the kernel has support for loading firmware, emerge --ask sys-kernel/linux-firmware and a reboot should do the trick. See wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Linux_firmware Commented Feb 23, 2019 at 20:12

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