How do I find out if there is a better driver for my WiFI card?

Question

I have a Thinkpad W520 and Ubuntu 11.04. The WiFi card is spotty. It works 80 percent of the time, but every few minutes it hangs and gets "stuck" for a few seconds before working again.

So before I resort to replacing the WiFi card, how can I see if there is a WiFi driver update and how can I install it?

lscpi -v shows that my WiFi is:

03:00.0 Network controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8188CE 802.11b/g/n
  WiFi Adapter (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device 8195
    Flags: bus master, fast devsel, latency 0, IRQ 17
    I/O ports at 5000 [size=256]
    Memory at f3a00000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K]
    Capabilities: <access denied>
    Kernel driver in use: rtl8192ce
    Kernel modules: rtl8192ce

Answer 1

This is an old question, but ...

The open source wireless drivers are in the kernel, so your best option is to upgrade the kernel. If that fails, try 11.10, 12.04, and a mainline kernel

http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/

If the problem persists, file a bug report, but you first need to identify the wireless card.

How do I report a bug?

On the flip side, you can almost certainly purchase an inexpensive USB card ($10-15 tops) that works with linux "out of the box". It is sort of a one time purchase ;)