How to install realtek RTL8188FTV wireless driver on debian

If you have purchased that wireless card to run on your Linux distribution, specifically on debian, you got a big problem, because this wireless card doesn’t work by default on debian and other distribution. The driver for RTL8188FTV is not on old kernel tree, so the linux distributions with old kernel, less than 6.4 version, haven’t support for this usb card.

So, to made this card to work on debian an based distributions, we need to update the kernel to the latest version, download the firmware of this wireless card and put it on the system firmware folder. It’s simple! We only need to add debian bookworm backports repository and update the kernel.

Firstly we need to setup the backports repository:

# echo "deb http://deb.debian.org/debian bookworm-backports main contrib non-free non-free-firmware" >> /etc/apt/sources.list

Now update the apt cache:

# apt update

Install the latest kernel available:

# apt install -t bookworm-backports linux-image-6.5.0-0.deb12.4-amd64

Now go to kernel git page and download the latest firmware package available.

https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git

Or click on this link to download the linux firmware package: https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/firmware/linux-firmware.git/snapshot/linux-firmware-20240410.tar.gz

Extract the package to get the wireless card firmware:

$ tar nxf linux-firmware-20240115.tar.gz

Copy the firmware binaries files to your system firmware folder:

# mkdir -p /usr/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/
# cd linux-firmware-20240115
# cp rtlwifi/*.bin /usr/lib/firmware/rtlwifi/

Load the kernel module and reboot your system for the changes to take effects.:

# modprob rtlwifi
# reboot

Now you have on your system the driver for your wireless card. So your wi-fi card is working now. This tutorial also work’s on others debian based distributions.