Zorin OS Installed Perfectly But WiFi Driver Is Completely Missing?

Hardware Support
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I have been a Windows user my entire life but recently made the switch after a friend on a Linux community forum I frequent recommended giving Zorin OS a proper shot for my older hardware. The community there has been genuinely helpful with most things but this particular issue has me completely stuck and I figured casting a wider net might help.

I have a Lenovo IdeaPad 3 with an Intel Core i5 and 8GB RAM that was struggling badly on Windows 11 due to the overhead. Zorin installed beautifully and the performance improvement on the same hardware was immediately noticeable. Everything worked out of the box except for one critical thing, the WiFi adapter is completely invisible to the operating system. No networks showing, no adapter listed in the network settings, nothing.

Running lspci in the terminal shows the card is a Realtek RTL8821CE which apparently has a long history of driver headaches on Linux based systems. I have tried a couple of terminal commands I found through searching but without a working internet connection on the machine itself the process of getting the driver installed becomes a frustrating chicken and egg situation.

I am currently transferring files via USB from another machine to try and install the driver manually but I am not confident I have the right package for the Zorin kernel version I am running.

Has anyone dealt with the RTL8821CE specifically on a Debian based system and found a clean solution that actually sticks? And if this older Lenovo hardware continues causing compatibility headaches I have been browsing platforms that sell computers and searching AI about some platforms that sell affordable replacement machines that might handle Linux out of the box more cooperatively.

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Another method is to tether your phone as a WiFi hotspot temporarily, allowing you internet access on the affected machine. This can help enormously.

The RTL8821CE has a bit of history, but generally, kernel support for it has improved quite a lot over the years. I would not consider this a lost cause, just yet.

Have you tried:

sudo modprobe rtw88_8821ce

Are you setting up:

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I have the RTL8822CE, not quite the same as you. It runs just fine but only on the 6.8 kernel.

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Do you have a Dualboot with Windows? If yes, please disable fast startup at power management in Windows.

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@SaraWill, welcome to the Zorin OS forum.
We are happy to bend over backwards helping Zorin OS users resolve issues.

However, we are strict about advertising and spam.

When I approved your post for the forum, I removed the unnecessary advertising links.

As you can edit sales page names back in; But not reply to helpful posts, it will not take long for me to determine a likely Spam Attempt resulting in removing the thread and the account in question.

There is no need to advertise Computer Sales Pages in your post for any reason.
Editing them back in (again) will result in thread and account removal.

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