I've bought new hardware (ASUS B850 board, released April 2025). The Solus Budgie Live image runs with kernel 6.12 and is from January 2025. Installation of Solus 4.7 on an SSD was successful without errors, except for not having a network device and hence no internet connection, so no chance to do a system update.
The B850 mainboard uses the Realtek 8125D network device, which uses the r8169 network drivers. They are installed with the updated current kernel (6.15.6-321.current
), but they are present as well in the 6.12.9-312.current kernel
of the live image.
Some preliminary diagnostics:
$ lspci -nnk | grep -A3 Ethernet
$ Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8125 2.5GbE Controller
$ DeviceName: Realtek RTL8125D LAN
I've checked the drivers in this folder for kernels 6.12. and 6.15, and they are of the same versions:
$ /lib/modules/6.12.9-312.current/kernel/drivers/net/ethernet/realtek
$ ls
$ 8139cp.ko.zst 8139too.ko.zst r8169.ko.zst
So it should work, but for some reason it doesn't.
$ nmcli dev status
$ DEVICE TYPE STATE CONNECTION
$ lo loopback connected (externally) lo
$ ping 9.9.9.9
$ ping: connect: Network is unreachable
$ dmesg | grep r8169
$ r8169 error -EN0DEV: unknown chip XID 688, contact r8169 maintainers (see MAINTAINERS file)
I've installed another distro (Suse Tumbleweed, kernel 6.16) to make sure the hardware (esp. cable, RJ45 port) is indeed working. And it does work fine.
What is the recommended (easiest/most stable) way of installing Solus to relatively new hardware or alternatively updating/fixing Solus without internet access?