Ralink RT2x00 Wi-Fi adapters and Ralink/MediaTek WiSoC radios
A long-running family of 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi chips from Ralink (later acquired by MediaTek), covering PCI, PCIe, and USB client adapters from the mid-2000s through the early 2010s as well as the on-chip radios in Ralink/MediaTek router SoCs like the RT2880, RT305x, RT335x, and MT7620. Cheap RT5370 USB dongles and these SoC-based home routers are the most common surviving hardware.
recommendation
It should stay because, although the hardware is legacy and no longer sold new, the driver still sees upstream maintenance (a linux-wireless patch touched the core as recently as October 2025) and OpenWrt continues to ship rt2800-usb and rt2800soc packages for surviving USB dongles and MT7620-class home routers. An annotation noting its legacy status would help set expectations, but real-world users still depend on it.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Recent upstream maintenance exists for rt2x00 in linux-wireless; this 2025 patch touches rt2x00 core code, indicating the driver is not abandoned.
- openwrt.org
OpenWrt still publishes a kmod-rt2800-usb package, showing current downstream deployment/support for RT2x00 USB devices.
- openwrt.org
OpenWrt still ships rt2800-usb-firmware for RT28xx/3xxx USB devices, which is evidence of ongoing field use of these legacy chipsets.
- openwrt.org
OpenWrt's MediaTek/Ralink SoC reference says MT7620 and related older Ralink/ramips SoCs use the rt2800soc driver, indicating surviving embedded/router deployments.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_RT2800SOC remains present in current kernel series and lists supported WiSoC chips RT2880/3050/3052/3350/3352.
- cateee.net
LKDDb documents RT2800USB RT53xx support, including RT5370, confirming the driver still covers older Ralink USB chipset families in current kernels.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory confirmed from in-tree Kconfig/module structure via shell rg. Upstream activity was checked with lore_file_timeline on rt2x00dev.c, which returned recent 2025 linux-wireless patches; no removal evidence was found, but subject-only removal searches via lore/lei failed due tool limits, so I did not treat that as positive evidence. Deployment evidence came from web search results on OpenWrt package/docs pages and LKDDb pages. Conclusion: hardware family is legacy and mostly old USB dongles/router SoCs, with low but nonzero real deployments today, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove.