Realtek RTL8192CE/RTL8188CE PCIe 802.11n Wi-Fi adapters
A family of early-2010s Realtek single-band 802.11n Wi-Fi chipsets sold on Mini PCIe cards inside laptops and on low-cost desktop PCIe add-in cards. The RTL8192CE and its single-stream sibling RTL8188CE were extremely common in budget consumer hardware around 2010-2014, and cheap PCIe cards built on the chipset are still occasionally sold new today.
recommendation
Worth keeping but documenting as legacy hardware. The chipset dates to 2010 and most installed devices are aging out, yet upstream developers were still landing fixes and cleanups against this code in 2025, and budget PCIe cards using the chipset remain available new at retail. That combination — active maintenance plus a long tail of real users — argues for leaving it in place rather than deprecating it.
repository signals
sources
- lore.kernel.org
The driver still received upstream fixes in 2025, e.g. a stack-size warning fix touching rtl8192ce code.
- lore.kernel.org
The driver also saw 2025 cleanup work across rtlwifi code including rtl8192ce files, indicating it is maintained rather than abandoned.
- cateee.net
LKDDb shows CONFIG_RTL8192CE remains present through current kernel series and covers Realtek RTL8192CE/RTL8188CE PCIe 802.11n adapters.
- manualslib.com
The RTL8192CE user manual is dated 11 February 2010, anchoring the chipset generation as early 2010-era 802.11n Mini PCIe hardware.
- newegg.com
A retail adapter using chipset RTL8192CE was still listed for sale new on Newegg, so new-in-box niche availability persisted into the mid-2020s.
codex reasoning notes (technical)
Real driver directory with module-bearing C sources. Lore evidence came from mcp__lore_http__.lore_file_timeline on rtl8192ce/hw.c, which returned 2023-2025 patch traffic and no removal-themed subjects in the sampled history; cited lore URLs were taken directly from that tool output. Hardware/deployment evidence came from web search results: LKDDb for kernel support scope, ManualsLib for the 2010-era product manual, and Newegg for current niche retail availability. Conclusion: old consumer Wi-Fi hardware with low modern deployment, but still seeing upstream fixes and occasional new-stock listings, so keep the driver but annotate it as legacy rather than deprecate/remove.