Installing Realtek rtl8723be driver for Ubuntu, Debian or Fedora

Originally written by  Chirath R

I have been searching for a fix for the wifi problems in my HP Pavillion ab-028tx. It’s having a Realtek rtl8723be Wifi Card. For a long time, there was no perfect driver for this device. I tried many drivers and none of them fixed the disconnection and low wifi range problems. At last, I found a fix from ubuntu forums. Follow these steps to get your wifi working in Ubuntu.

• Get into your BIOS(in my case I had to press f10 after turning on my laptop). Then go into System Configuration->Boot options and Disable secure boot. This is very important as third party drivers won’t work in secure boot mode as they are not verified.
  • Save and restart(f10), open up a terminal (ctrl + alt + t) and type the following commands in order.
  • Installing new driver for the Realtek wifi chip.

  Note:  its suggested to have latest kernel installed(Linux kernel 4+).

  Step 1:

  Ubuntu :

  $ sudo add-apt-repository ppa:hanipouspilot/rtlwifi
  $ sudo apt-get update
  $ sudo apt-get install rtlwifi-new-dkms linux-firmware

  • Restart ubuntu.

  $ sudo reboot

  Debian:

  $  sudo apt-get install firmware-realtek

  Step 2:

  Common steps for all three OSes.

  • If you are not able to see your wifi networks, follow the steps below :
  • Download the driver by clicking “Download ZIP” from GitHub.(Note that the GitHub driver must be the master branch) or clone the driver by using the link https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new.git
  • extract it to your home directory and open a terminal.
  • Execute the following commands :

  Step 3:

  Ubuntu and Debian

  $ sudo apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r) gcc g++ build-essential dkms git
  $ sudo reboot
  $ cd rtlwifi_new-rock.new_btcoex
  $ make
  $ sudo make install
  $ sudo modprobe -rv rtl8723be

  Fedora

  $ sudo dnf install kernel-devel kernel-headers
  $ cd rtlwifi_new-rock.new_btcoex
  $ make
  $ sudo make install
  $ sudo modprobe -rv rtl8723be

  Step 4:

  Common Steps

  • If you are unable to get wifi even now, change the antenna input to #2 using the command:

  $ sudo modprobe -v rtl8723be ant_sel=2

  • note : try changing ant-set=1 or 0 if it doesn’t work for u.
  • Now your Wifi will be working perfectly as in windows, now set input #2 as permanent.

  $ echo "options rtl8723be ant_sel=2 fwlps=0" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf

  And reload the module.

  $ sudo modprobe -r rtl8723be

  $ sudo modprobe rtl8723be

  Now your WiFi should be working perfectly 🙂 .