I recently set up Ubuntu 12.04 and, to no one’s surprise, the wireless was being touchy. I have an ASUS PCE-N53 N600 wireless adapter, and was able to figure it out after a bit of pain.

Prerequisites

You need make, gcc, build-essentials, linux-headers-generic, and maybe g++.

Installing the driver

Run the following code:

wget http://dlcdnet.asus.com/pub/ASUS/wireless/PCE-N53/Linux_PCE_N53_1008.zip
unzip Linux_PCE_N53_1008.zip
cd Linux

tar -jxvf DPO_GPL_RT5592STA_LinuxSTA_v2.6.0.0_20120326.tar.bz2
cd DPO_GPL_RT5592STA_LinuxSTA_v2.6.0.0_20120326

wget http://gridlox.net/diff/rt5592sta_fix_64bit_3.8.patch
patch -p1 < rt5592sta_fix_64bit_3.8.patch

make  # this might fail!

sudo make install
modprobe rt5592sta

This will:

  1. Download the driver and unzip
  2. Untar the insides (yummy)
  3. Download a patch for the driver and patch it
  4. Recompile and install the driver
  5. Activate the wireless adapter

If the make command fails, that’s okay, just run the rest of the commands and it should work!