Realtek RTL8192DE/RTL8192DU 802.11n Wi-Fi adapters
Shared support code for Realtek's RTL8192DE (PCIe) and RTL8192DU (USB) dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi chips, a 2011-era family that shipped in budget laptops, mini-PCIe cards, and USB Wi-Fi dongles through roughly 2013.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy hardware. The chips have not been sold new for over a decade, but a small number of users still run them, no other in-tree driver covers the same silicon, and the code is clearly not abandoned: fixes landed as recently as 2025 and 2026, and in 2024 the shared code was extended to support the newer rtl8192du driver. An annotation flagging it as legacy 802.11n would help future cleanup decisions without disrupting current users.
repository signals
sources
- git.kernel.org
The rtl8192d common code still receives upstream fixes as of 2026-03-08, indicating active maintenance rather than abandonment or pending removal.
- git.kernel.org
A rtl8192de follow-up fix landed on 2025-02-06, reinforcing that this hardware family still gets bug-fix attention upstream.
- git.kernel.org
In 2024 the rtl8192d common code was extended to support the new rtl8192du driver, showing the directory remains part of maintained functionality.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_RTL8192DE is still present through current kernel series and identifies this family as RTL8192DE/RTL8188DE 802.11n PCIe hardware.
- linux-hardware.org
Linux-Hardware shows at least some present-day probe activity for RTL8192DU on modern Linux, supporting a low-but-nonzero deployment estimate for the RTL8192D family.
- rtl-drivers.eu
A public mirror of the RTL8192DE datasheet identifies a 2011-era RTL8192DE product, consistent with this being long-obsolete 802.11n hardware not still sold new in 2025.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory: shared code for rtl8192de/rtl8192du. Chipset family identified from local `rg` hits and module description in this tree. Upstream activity was checked via shell `git -c safe.directory=... log`; commit URLs were then formed as canonical kernel.org commit pages from the hashes returned. `lei` was unavailable, so lore-specific querying could not be used; no removal signal was found in reachable evidence, while 2025-2026 fixes argue against deprecate/remove. Deployment evidence came from web search results for LKDDb, Linux-Hardware, and a public datasheet mirror. Conclusion: legacy 2011-era 802.11n hardware, still occasionally deployed, no clear replacement driver for the same chips, so keep the code but annotate as legacy.