As a long-time Linux user, every time I hear Realtek or see a rtlxxxx driver the blood drains from my head. Just a constant nightmare of crashy firmware and dkms hell. Maybe things have gotten better in the last couple years, but I've steered clear every time I've had the chance.
My ASUS lappy with rtl8xxx WiFi started having issues on newer kernel 5.10.x spewing bugchecks in the dmesg and is locked till reboot. Apparently it's a frequent issue, cause my searches showed it's been happening to others since at least 2018. It's 2022 and not much better.
However! Frame.work is Ina position to be an agent of change!
FWIW, I just had a realtek USB ethernet adapter take down my network twice last week when I was trying out with an Android tablet.
It's part of a powered USB hub, and it works fine while the tablet is connected, but after disconnecting the tablet, the ethernet controller stays active, and about half an hour later my entire home network stops working. I had to disconnect the realtek adapter and reboot my network switch each time.
So, their problems are not entirely limited to mac.
I have had many issues with Realtek over the years causing windows to wake. Just changing the network card in my laptop to Intel causes that issue to go away. I won’t buy a motherboard for my desktop if it’s Realtek.
