This Clevo laptop is a new machine and like a lot of new machines, not all of its hardware has drivers in the current stable release of debian.
Happily, there is a driver for its rtl8723ae wireless networking device in the later 3.8 Linux kernel versions. So it’s just a case of installing the package called “kernel-package” and following the instructions in it, to make a new linux-image package with the latest drivers in it.
One small thing which tripped me up is that you usually need to write “make-kpkg –rootcmd fakeroot –initrd kernel-image” now. I forgot the “–initrd” option at first.
Hi, it could be interesting to open a wishlist bug in order to backport this driver in Wheezy!
Oh. I didn’t know we could backport one driver. I think it also depends on rtlwifi and maybe other stuff. How would I write such a wishlist bug? Is there an existing backported kernel-driver I could mimic?
To send a wishlist bug: `reportbug src:linux` then you’ll be asked about the severity, choose wishlist (however lack of hardware support probably deserves a higher severity).
Also you might take a look at the ‘compat-drivers’ project:
https://backports.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/Releases
Why not just install Linux from Debian experimental?
I didn’t install the package from Debian experimental because 3.8 entered experimental in late February and I installed 3.8-rc5 in late January. I may well switch to linux-image-3.8-trunk at next upgrade, so thanks for the pointer.