When I’m connecting devices together, I usually choose a wired ethernet connection. An ethernet connection offers faster, more consistent speeds, together with lower latency which is important for gaming. This is mainly because the signal is sent directly rather than broadcasted. This direct approach has fewer variables that can impact signal strength, like interference from other electronics such as neighbouring routers.
However, Wi-Fi excels in areas ethernet falls short. There’s no wire clutter, and you can connect anywhere in your home. Almost all modern devices can connect to Wi-Fi from desktops to smartphones to single board computers. And with a decent router you can have many devices connected and streaming simultaneously.
A popular solution is a USB Wi-Fi adapter, eliminating the need to hardwire the computer to a router or other network device.
Many modern Wi-Fi devices are branded Windows only. While there are enterprising Linux developers that code drivers for some of these devices, they can’t offer official support, and there’s the risk the device may not work flawlessly.
This review looks at the BrosTrend Linux USB WiFi Adapter AX1800 (AX4L). Unlike most Wi-Fi sellers, BrosTrend provide Linux support for Ubuntu and Ubuntu-based distros. Their Wi-Fi adapter chipsets and drivers are developed by Realtek. The adapter also works with Windows, but as you might guess, I focused on testing the adapter under Linux.
The AX4L retails for £33. You get the Wi-Fi adapter, 2 omni-directional Wi-Fi antenna with a gain of 5dBi, a USB 3.0 cradle with 3.3 feet USB 3.0 extension cable. There’s a paper-based quick installation guide provided.
The long cable allows for flexible placement on the desktop away from potential interference. As a result, the theory is that the reception level of the wireless signal should improve significantly with careful placement.
This is a WiFi 6 adapter offering OFDMA, UL/DL MU-MIMO, 1024-QAM, and WPA3, a popular Wi-Fi security protocol.
Installation
A small installation guide is provided with the device. Alternatively, visit BrosTrend’s support section linux.brostrend.com where you can read the installation procedure. You need a working network connection to download the driver and its dependencies (dkms, linux-headers…). If the machine doesn’t have a wired connection or an existing WiFi connection, you can use mobile phone wifi-to-usb tethering.
On my Ubuntu 25.04 / Raspberry Pi OS systems, first perform a general update.
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade
Reboot the machine, and then plug the USB cable into a USB 3 slot.
BrosTrend provide a script which makes installation very easy. It detects the package manager your system uses, checks that you’ve got the kernel headers installed, and if not, installs them for you. It then proceeds to download the driver for the device, installs any other missing packages, and compiles the driver. For the AX4L, that’s the rtl8852bu driver.
Download this installation script and run it with this command.
$ sh -c 'wget linux.brostrend.com/install -O /tmp/install && sh /tmp/install'
You’ll be promoted to enter your root password. The driver is then compiled and installed.
The installation process takes under a minute on a 12th generation Intel PC, and around 5 minutes 45 seconds on a Raspberry Pi 5. These systems receive automatic driver updates.
Here’s output from inxi showing the USB device is present as the second network device.
Next page: Page 2 – In Operation
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Summary