Realtek RTL8192/RTL8723/RTL8821 Wi-Fi adapters (rtlwifi)
A family of Realtek 802.11n and early 802.11ac PCIe and USB Wi-Fi chips from the early 2010s, including the RTL8188, RTL8192, RTL8723, and RTL8821AE/8812AE parts. They were extremely common in budget laptops, mini-PCIe cards, and USB dongles roughly between 2011 and 2016, and some are still sold today as cheap replacement parts.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting its niche: the hardware is old (datasheets date to 2013) and has been superseded in new designs by Realtek's newer rtw88 and rtw89 drivers, but millions of these chips are still in the wild and replacement cards remain on retail shelves in 2025. Upstream maintenance is also clearly alive, with bug fixes and a use-after-free patch landing as recently as 2026, and there is no in-tree successor covering the same device IDs, so removal would strand working hardware.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
Upstream maintenance is still active: Realtek posted an rtlwifi fix in April 2026 touching core code.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still receives bug-fix traffic, including a February 2026 use-after-free fix acked by the wireless maintainer.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows rtlwifi remains present in current kernel series and covers multiple Realtek PCIe/USB WLAN modules.
- manualslib.com
RTL8821AE documentation is dated January 28, 2013, indicating this family is from the early-2010s generation.
- walmart.com
At least some rtlwifi-era hardware (RTL8821AE) was still being sold as new replacement stock in 2025-era retail listings.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Local inspection of rtlwifi Kconfig/Makefile shows a bundle of legacy Realtek PCIe/USB parts: mostly 802.11n plus RTL8821AE/8812AE-era 802.11ac, with no in-tree one-for-one successor for the same device IDs, so replacement_driver=null. lore_file_timeline on the directory path returned no matches, so I used MCP lore_activity on base.c and pci.c instead; those returned 2025-2026 fixes/cleanups and no removal thread, which argues against deprecation. Web search found LKDDb for current kernel presence, a dated RTL8821AE manual showing the family's age, and a 2025-era retail listing showing residual new-old-stock/replacement sales. Net: legacy hardware with low but nonzero ongoing deployment and active upstream fixes, so keep the driver but annotate it as serving mostly old hardware rather than new mainstream designs.