Linux is not “laptop ready”

PROBLEM WITH LINUX ON A LAPTOP :
NO WiFi!

wifi does not work on my laptop

Most laptops come with Realtek Wifi – They don’t work in Linux!
The depressing Linux advice is: ONLY get a laptop [any pc] with an Intel board for WiFi or be restricted to a cable connection.
Intel is the only one that shares their WiFi driver code with Linux staff.
Or, settle for only a cable connection to the internet.
Note: Linux WiFi does not work on a desktop either [unless it is an Intel WiFi card].
“no wifi adapter found”

Broadcom is more expensive than realtek but no better in linux.

around the internet:
No Wi-Fi Adapter Found
Wireless Adapter RTL8821CE Not Working
Wifi rtl8821ce driver stopped working
Why would Wi-Fi not work on a laptop with Linux Ubuntu?
How do I enable WiFi on my HP laptop Ubuntu?
I installed Mint (based on Ubuntu) on a laptop and the WiFi didn’t work.
In my laptop, Linux-ubuntu is installed but Wi-Fi doesn’t show.
Crazy! I can see wireless network but can’t connect

I have had several laptops; HP Pavilion-dv2, sony VAIO, Dell XPS-13, alienware Alpha-R2, HP 14-CF0051.
None of them had an Intel WiFi card and wifi has not worked in any of them.

create a “Live” USB ISO of the Linux version you want to install on your laptop (when you get it) and take it with you to your favorite computer store to check out the laptops you might want. [see my “EXPERIENCE” below]

if you are lucky:

“How to Install Realtek RTL8821CE WiFi Driver”

“Linux commands to activate
a RealTek WiFi modem-card”

rtl8821ce and others.

step 1.
directly connect to the internet with a [cat 5+] cable

steps 2.- 6.:
as root [root ~]:

2. [2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]# dnf update
3. [2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]# dnf install dkms make kernel-devel
4. [2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]# git clone https://github.com/tomaspinho/rtl8821ce.git
5. [2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]# cd rtl8821ce
6. [2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]# ./dkms-install.sh
[2021-07-19 root@mypc ~]#


step 7.
Go to the “drop down” network icon in the top right-hand corner,
turn off the cable connection, turn on the wifi, click “connect” on
your wifi connection and give it your password.
** that’s it! ** . . . now reboot and see if it still works.
Try different websites and browsers to confirm that it consistently works.
For me, it quickly failed.

EXPERIENCE:
Late 2019, I carried a fedora-30 live USB flash drive into Best Buy and on a variety of their laptops, I did a Shifted “Restart” boot from the windows start menu – and then selected the USB option to boot up the Live Fedora-30 chip [flash drive].
Then, in fedora I tried to bring up the WiFi network manager and select a wifi network – like “BestBuyPublic” or whatever might be nearby.
Of all the laptops in the store, I found ONLY 2 or 3 laptops where the wifi would come up. They were the ones which had INTEL WiFi cards in them. Specifically Intel AC-9560 and AC-9260. They worked! Great! But, they were THE ONLY ONES.

I had bought a laptop (an HP laptop [14-CF0051od]) in November of 2018 knowing that ALL laptops these days have WiFi in them and still feeling that surely the Linux “distributions” likewise would all have it universally enabled (WRONG!)
Many laptops come with Realtek modems and all I could find were very awkward instructions for compiling [“making”] a driver. Recently I found reasonable steps [above] for it, but still, nothing worked [see above].

The common knowledge is that only Intel provides the driver information on their WiFi cards,

2021-10-08
I just installed fedora 34 [the current latest version]
on my laptop [an HP 14-CF0051od] which happens to have a Realtek
RTL8821CE WiFi card and for the first time, I have not yet tried to install
the Realtek drivers. I installed cinnamon, as I normally do,
“dnf install @cinnamon-desktop-environment” and
the WIFI came up “out of the box”!
However, it locked up my laptop such that I had to
power off and upon powering back on, turn off the WiFi quickly as,
within seconds, it would lock up again. [“give it a try”?]

Same problem with the “problematic” Realtek drivers:
In fedora 30 and-or 32 I followed the steps [1-7] below and the wifi
list of local networks comes up, but when I go to a website,
the laptop locks up, I have to totally power off and reboot.
It never works.

Today, 2021-07-19, I tried one last time, and it worked till I rebooted; thanks for nothing.

[user@fedora34 ~]$ lspci
Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4352 802.11ac Wireless Network Adapter
in my [old] desktop pc … Broadcom does not work
Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8821CE 802.11ac PCIe Wireless Network Adapter
in my laptop … realtek does not work

“You also want to make sure SecureBoot is Disabled [and keep it off!] in the BIOS settings or it won’t let you load the unsigned self-complied kernel module.” – even after turning Secure Boot back off!
“Disabling Secure Boot is no loss: it adds no meaningful security anyway. It’s primarily a means for Microsoft to enforce its vendor lock-in on your computer…”
“Secure Boot locks down the computer and prevents it from booting into anything but Windows 10 [or 8].
“It is often necessary to disable Secure Boot to enable the grub2 boot loader and boot into Fedora – linux.”

Dynamic Kernel Module Support
Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) is a program/framework that enables generating [“make(ing)”] Linux kernel modules whose sources generally reside outside the kernel source tree. The concept is to have DKMS modules automatically rebuilt when a new kernel is installed.
note that the make command is unnecessary since the compilation is done by the DKMS module.

Non-free drivers and firmware are produced by entities refusing or unable to cooperate with the free software community. With non-free drivers and firmware support is often unavailable or severely constrained. For instance features are often left out, bugs go unfixed, and what support does exist from the manufacture may be fleeting.

08/30/2009, 11 am:
I went in to the System -> Adminstration -> Network tool again yesterday and
this time clicked “Edit” and I saw that “Activate device when computer starts”
was not checked! That was all it took. We are now connected to the internet with the wire