FreeBSD 11 on a Lenovo X220 works very well for my purpose, except for the Realtek RTL8188CE wireless card. I always wondered why wifi downloads were very slow, but when it trashes the wifi network I needed to try for a fix.
I downloaded the latest win 7 x86 driver from Realtek, and extracted the .sys and .inf files.
Using ndisgen I created a new driver - rtl8192ce_sys.ko.
This was moved to /boot/modules along with ndis.ko from the /boot/kernel directory.
My /boot/loader.conf was edited with ndis_load="YES" and rtl8192ce_sys_load="YES".
My /etc/rc.conf was edited with wlans_ndis0="wlan0" (not sure if this is correct).
But, wifi does not show up after rebooting. dmesg shows the original rtwn0 devices,
even if I edit /boot/loader.conf with if_rtwn_load="NO", rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_load="NO",
and rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_B_load="NO".
kldstat shows ndis.ko and rtl8192ce_sys.ko loaded. ifconfig shows no wireless device.
How can I get FreeBSD to recognize the new ndis driver? I'm not sure a this driver will resolve
the problem, but it's worth a try. Otherwise, I guess I'll need a USB wifi adapter.
I downloaded the latest win 7 x86 driver from Realtek, and extracted the .sys and .inf files.
Using ndisgen I created a new driver - rtl8192ce_sys.ko.
This was moved to /boot/modules along with ndis.ko from the /boot/kernel directory.
My /boot/loader.conf was edited with ndis_load="YES" and rtl8192ce_sys_load="YES".
My /etc/rc.conf was edited with wlans_ndis0="wlan0" (not sure if this is correct).
But, wifi does not show up after rebooting. dmesg shows the original rtwn0 devices,
even if I edit /boot/loader.conf with if_rtwn_load="NO", rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_load="NO",
and rtwn-rtl8192cfwU_B_load="NO".
kldstat shows ndis.ko and rtl8192ce_sys.ko loaded. ifconfig shows no wireless device.
How can I get FreeBSD to recognize the new ndis driver? I'm not sure a this driver will resolve
the problem, but it's worth a try. Otherwise, I guess I'll need a USB wifi adapter.