What version of linux supports rtl8723be?

Question

My laptop has this card, what should I do? What version of linux should I get?

Answer 1

Actually there were/are problems with the Wifi chipset RTL8723BE. Here is a link to my blog post describing couple of my attempts to solve this with different kernels:

https://artofcode.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/problems-with-wifi-signal-under-linux/

One conclusion: newest kernel doesn't automatically mean better support for this chipset.

It's not that bad if you can use antenna selection configuration. If I recall correctly this was the case with some kernels in versions 4.15.0-X where X < 33. With the kernel 4.15.0-33 you need to compile a kernel module which may be not obvious for less advanced users.

In worst case it was like that: antenna selection configuration was ignored and source code of an alternative kernel module was not compatible with the kernel...

The best is to try different Linux kernels using live versions.

Answer 2

I think it is supported from linux 3.13 ....
Install ubuntu 15.10 (which has kernel 4.2)

Answer 3

According to this answer, the Linux kernel includes a driver for the RTL8723BE wireless network adapter chipset since (at least) version 3.13, which is included in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Alternatively the most recent release 15.10 has a newer kernel version that should work just as well.