WORKING RTL8723DE WiFi + Bluetooth Linux Driver - Arch/Ubuntu/Fedora Users

[Alando_Angatiah]

Recently, I aquired a HP 15-BW011DX notebook and decided to install Ubuntu 18.04 LTS on it.

To my surprise,  when I booted Ubuntu, the Bluetooth was working fine, however, the WiFi adapter could not be found.

Naturally, I went to the internet for answers (Linux forums and GitHub) and stumbled upon this: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new/ 

However, when I install the driver from the extended branch I have a low Wireless connection and Bluetooth sucked (it only worked on devices <5cm away from the laptop). Then I discovered that if I use "modprobe rtl8723de ant_sel=2" WiFi is boosted, but bluetooth still sucks due to HP using one antenna and improperly coding the ROM to use 2 if available, according to fwfinger.

Anyway... I found a better solution which allows bluetooth to work with WiFi enabled flawlessly. I made a script which solves the issue with basically selecting 3 different letters. It can be run offline (special conditions apply xD) or online. It uses  smlinux's driver rather than the "OFFICIAL" one from lwfinger. It's funny that the official is no way near as stable as smlinux's.

TO INSTALL OFFLINE:

1. Ensure dkms is installed (If you don't have an ethernet cable, you can just download the .deb, rpm etc. from here and install it)

2. Figure out your kernel version with "uname -srv" and download the appropriate zip    

Kernel>=5.0

Kernel>=4.15

Kernel>=4.11

Kernel<=4.10

3. Extract the zip into the directory with the script and execute the script

TO INSTALL ONLINE:

0. Connect to a network via ethernet (obviously :P... in my last post someone had the audacity to ask how did I download anything without WiFi in a rude manner)

1. Execute the script

You can download the script here. Or you can go to smlinux's github and use the steps he has there (my script does that, but in a much shorter way for you)

I noticed that the driver may sometimes refuse to connect to WiFi, but a simple restart solves it..

A simple workaround for this is to "crontab -e" in terminal and add "15 * * * * echo "<your_sudo_password>" | sudo -S rmmod 8723de && echo "<your_sudo_password>" | sudo -S modprobe rtl8723de" to the end of the file. This will create a task for the driver to be restarted every 15 minutes (when it restarts, you'll lose WiFi for 5 seconds then automatically reconnect... It's better than having to restart the system completely and does not affect file downloads at all)