Dear Maintainer,

Cheap USB Wi-Fi sticks based on the AICSemi AIC8800DC (sold under TP-Link
and many other brands) have no driver in Debian 13 / Linux 6.12. Plugged
in, the stick first shows up as a USB mass-storage device (a69c:572e, 3.7
MB disk with a Windows installer); it must be switched with usb_modeswitch
to a69c:88dc (or enumerates directly as 2357:0147 on some units). No
in-kernel module binds to it, so no wlan interface appears.

Tested on Debian 13, kernel 6.12.113+deb13-amd64, amd64:
- radxa-pkg/aic8800 builds but fails on this chip ("AIC8800DC change to
AIC8800DW", cmd 1037 timeout, probe fails).
-
https://www.google.com/url?q=https://github.com/Kiborgik/aic8800dc-linux-patched&source=gmail&ust=1793616927205000&sa=E
(commit aad6a09, GPL modules aic_load_fw + aic8800_fdrv, firmware
aic8800DC) builds as an out-of-tree module and works: interface appears,
scans, WPA2 connects, survives reboot (with a udev modeswitch rule for
a69c:572e). It taints the kernel (unsigned) and prints "USING PERMISSIVE
CUSTOM REGULATORY RULES", which should be reviewed before any inclusion.

Request: please consider packaging/including a driver for the AIC8800
family (e.g. as aic8800-dkms in non-free-firmware/contrib, or
upstream-first via staging) plus the matching firmware, and a
usb_modeswitch rule for a69c:572e, so that these adapters work out of the
box in a future Debian kernel release.

Thank you.

Hi Antonio,

No, we won't add out of tree code in the src:linux packages to support
additional adapter. These changes need to go upstream first, so if
support for a particular device is missing approach please the vendor
and upstream with adding appropriate support.

Regards,
Salvatore