Missing driver for ASUS USB-N53?

Question

I have a WiFi USB adapter called "Asus N53 Dual-Band Wireless-N600 Adapter".

I've tried just sticking it into my (up-to-date) Ubuntu 15.04 computer, but it doesn't work.

syslog:

kernel: usb 1-3: new high-speed USB device number 20 using xhci_hcd
kernel: usb 1-3: New USB device found, idVendor=0b05, idProduct=180b
kernel: usb 1-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=3
kernel: usb 1-3: Product: 802.11ac WLAN
kernel: usb 1-3: Manufacturer: MediaTek Inc.
kernel: usb 1-3: SerialNumber: 000000000
mtp-probe: checking bus 1, device 20: "/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:14.0/usb1/1-3"
mtp-probe: bus: 1, device: 20 was not an MTP device

lsusb:

Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0b05:180b ASUSTek Computer, Inc.

I read somewhere that this device is actually "USB-N53 B1" and that no driver exists for this device. Is this true?

I found this project on Github, but I'm not sure it supports my card: https://github.com/openwrt/mt76

Answer 1

Still relevant even for 16.10. Should work also in 16.04 (tested) and (I believe) for 15.04 and 15.10 (but didn't test).

It seems that we have mediatek-MT7612U in our device, but official driver (from official Mediatek website) doesn't even build.

However there is brilliant repository with driver for another device with the same chip:

repo for Netgear-A6210

Cloning and building this code made the trick. I also had to reboot my system after installing.

git clone https://github.com/jurobystricky/Netgear-A6210
cd Netgear-A6210
make
sudo make install

Answer 2

The ASus USB-N53 is now supported with any new install of ubuntu 18, I got the USB-N53 micro working with this package: https://github.com/jeremyb31/rtl8822bu

The JurobyStricky repo did not work for me in Ubu 18.10