BrosTrend AC1200 Linux WiFi Adapter for PC Compatible with Ubuntu Mint Kali

Easy five stars. I returned two other wifi devices that claimed to work with Linux on older hardware but didn't. This one came with instructions to download a Linux driver. But I just plugged it in to see. It worked almost instantly. No drivers were needed for this fresh install of Mint on an old Dell Precision 3500. I'm posting this from that old Dell over wifi minutes after plugging it in.

Most of my daily work is heavily based on Linux based OS. The wifi chip on my laptop started malfunctioning and I had no access to wireless internet. My laptop is 8 years old, and I do not plan to buy a new one. Still a lot of life left. Working with wired internet (which I could ) at home is neither easy nor convenient. I was looking since 6 months , a wifi adapter which would be suitable for my linux OS. I tried conventional ones from TPlink and Netgear, but the online drivers available did not work for me. They were so designed for windows that you could plug in it to your windows machine they would work without driver installation. I was literally frustrated, trying to run shell scripts here and there to fix bugs and make the TPLink/ Netgear adapters work for me. But I failed. I came across the Brotrend adapter and bought one. It works like a charm. The linux installation is very easy, if you know basic shell commands (honestly you can just follow the instructions blindly). The support team is super helpful and they provide a detailed step-by-step guide for installing the linux driver. Note, they recommend internet access during driver installation since it downloads some debian package. You can use a wired ethernet connection from your router. The online internet speed check reveals the following metric: ping: 5 ms, download speed 83.40 mbps, upload speed: 75.45 mbps. The speed graphs are almost flat, with no variation. The router is in the first floor, and I work in the second floor. Very happy with my purchase, perhaps elated...I can resume normal work with my linux laptop after 6 months now. I would highly recommend this to people using linux OS, who needs speed boostup, or are interested in working in old laptops whose wifi chips are broken.

Worked fine with Linux Mint 22.2 on a 2012 HP Pavilon desktop. Plug and Play. No problem identifying the usb wifi device. No need for any drivers. It just showed up in the wifi choices. Clicked on it and it worked. (much better than the stock 2012 built in wifi card). I averaged 199 MPS download and 245 MPS upload across 4 speed test sites for a total of 20 tests. My newish phone will get over 300 MBS regularly. So it was a decently speedy. I think the speed is limited because this old computer has only USB 2.0 and that was the max it could get with USB 2.0. A good product. I ultimately chose a cheaper usb wifi that was just 10% faster on the downloads. No complaints though, if the cheap one breaks I will purchase this one. Search around for linux wifi usb and you will find my other reviews and the one I kept.

I gave this unit four stars only because once you have the adapter installed, it does the job well that it is designed to do. What exactly is it designed to do? That is part of where the catch comes in. It says it "works on Linux" but really they should have said it works on Debian based distributions. Others, which are not officially supported, they also provided instructions for on the web. I had in mind that this adapter would work to aid me in installing distributions to try out (I do distro reviews on YouTube). The first one I installed it into was a Debian based system, and the instructions were pretty clear on how to do it, even if a bit outdated (no need to add "busybox" onto the command, unless you are installing it on an ancient system). But you run one command and it is installed. That's fine for existing systems, but you have to have a LAN connection until you get it installed. Especially if and when you install a new system. So I would literally have to install it every time I tried out a new distro on my computer, and I can't do that without installing the distro first. On top of that, I could only install it on Debian based systems. When I followed the instructions for Arch Linux installation (it isn't officially supported nor a tested install), it involved extracting the source code from the DEB file and compiling it. They gave pretty good instructions on how to go about it, though with one typo or mistake ('sudo pacman -Sy' will not install anything on your computer, it just updates the repositories. It should be 'sudo pacman -S <pkg name>'). However, i encountered a driver error that I could do nothing to fix. So, "no Arch for me!" (says the Arch Nazi). At least on that computer. At least, not without using a temp LAN connection. Which I had hoped to get away from using. So despite the good speed and all, there are two issues that Linux users need to be aware of: 1) This is not a "plug n play" adapter. If you plan on using this to install a distribution or two, or more, don't buy this as you will not be able to use it to install anything since there is no way to install it until after you have installed the distro. This driver, as of today, cannot be found in any of the distribution repos. 2) This only has official support on Debian based distros such as Ubuntu and most any based on either Debian or Ubuntu, which probably covers somewhere around 55% of Linux users. Everyone else is lucky if it does install after using the instructions. And I'll throw in a 3) The "hidden" install instructions are in a PDF file on the mini-CD that comes with the unit, in the "Linux" directory. Why they don't tell folks that on the paper instructions for Windows and Mac that come with it, is unknown. Especially when this unit is advertised as being specifically for Linux users. Yet, at first glance, as several have said in these reviews, there doesn't appear to be any instructions for Linux. So who would I recommend this wifi adapter to? I would recommend it to anyone who has a bit of ability with a terminal/command line (one line for Debian users), just click and paste (probably why they put the instructions into a PDF file) and hit enter, pretty easy actually. And anyone with a Debian system, who doesn't plan on installing a bunch of systems, and who has access to a LAN Ethernet connection. If that description fits you, this is a great wifi adapter, look no further. Just be aware, DO NOT expect the Linux kernel to see and install this adapter out of the box. Because, well, it just won't do it. It's not designed to do that.

I have a Linux computer and this drive was a life saver for me. I didn't realize that I needed a much stronger wifi adapter until I purchased BrosTrend. Now I don't have those networks hiccups anymore. The wifi is much faster and stronger ( in my opinion).Easy setup and ready to go.

It says 1200Mbps. Would you believe 90Mbps? Because that's what I got. I contacted them for help and they gave me 2 things to do and some suggestions. I am using Zorin OS 17.3 6.8.0-87-generic for this test because it's listed in the description. 1 - run a script from their web site. a blind script, so I don't knw what it really did. I got 90Mbps down/20Mbps up It turns off after about 15 minutes so I have to go turn off WiFi and turn it back on. But it did run. I said - Is there a fix for speed? 2 - It comes as a USB 2.0 stick, so fix a config and make it USB 3.0 Didn't help. At all. But I did verify it was now a USB 3.0 stick. I said - It's still slow. 3 - They said to make it use 5G with a 40Mhz signal. (or something like that) What? I have 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz. That must be WiFi 6 or 7. Who has that and how would you do that? So now it sits on the table. I will test later on another PC, another distro later. I do not recommend this USB stick.

Works on 9 year old Dell All-In system running Linux Mint 22.3. Also worked on an HP tower that came with Windows 7.

Plug and play on Linux Zorin. I was shocked. Made it a lot simpler for me. Very satisfied.

Really fast delivery. The adapter came with both windows and linux drivers on cd, as well as clear instructions on the install. Which turned out to be unnecessary for my Kubuntu install as it just worked out of the box! That is no mean feat in Linux land and I am actually quite impressed. I think it is an excellent product.

Très bien

I'm using the BrosTrend AC1L Wireless Dual Band USB Adaptor on a 10 year old Asus X401A laptop to give me 5GHz Wifi - the laptop only has 2.4GHz as standard. It works very well, much faster than I expected since the laptop has only USB-2 ports. I don't normally review products I buy on Amazon but this one is good enough to make me do so. So, if you are looking for a dual band wi-fi USB adaptor for Linux, then you need to read the description from BrosTrend very carefully to make sure it will work for you. Specifically, it does not work on all Linux distros. So, make sure your distro is not on the unsupported list - as Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Centos are for example. If you pass this test, make sure the version of your Linux distro is present in the supported list. If it is, you are good to go. For anything else, contact BrosTrend by email and ask them, don't waste your time and money on a gamble. Before you order from Amazon, check again that you are ordering the Linux adaptor, rather than the Windows or Apple one. What you will receive will be the adaptor and a mini-CD containing drivers. The packaging will also tell you that you can contact BrosTrend for technical support. I found I didn't need the support ticket, I simply went to the BrosTrend website and found the download page for the AC1L, and downloaded the Quick Installation Guide for Linux. It's a PDF that gets displayed using a Google online viewer but it works fine. I then followed the instructions absolutely as specified - they are complete, simple and commendably brief. The installation script downloads all of the necessary libraries and code to build the driver, and installs it in kernel space. The run time on my (aged) laptop is about 15 minutes, the compilation phase takes several minutes so be patient. Once complete, I didn't even need to reboot, after a minute or so I could see two wireless network interfaces in Wi-Fi Settings. These are the two network interfaces of the AC1L and they both work! I can choose either as the interface I want to use, and additionally the Aeroplane Mode function key of the Asus turns off both of them. The performance of the 5GHz is surprisingly good - bear in mind I am using USB-2 on a 10 year old laptop, your experience may vary. Finally, if you send your Amazon order number to [email protected], you get 30 months warranty on the product, rather than just 24 months. It doesn't get much better than this.

Lo uso con Debian 13 KDE su un vecchio mini PC DELL; perfettamente plug&play; prende benissimo banda 5GHz anche se il router è al piano di sotto. Consigliatisssimo.

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