The Realtek RTL8159 has been appearing in some 10G-rated USB network adapters at online retailers, some for less than $100 USD. But currently the RTL8159 is only supported by Realtek's out-of-tree Linux kernel driver, but fortunately there will be mainline support coming with the Linux 7.2 kernel this summer.

The Realtek RTL8159 is used as a 10Gbit USB Ethernet chipset and support within the mainline Linux kernel is now expected for Linux 7.2. Open-source developer Birger Koblitz worked on this support for the mainline r8152 Ethernet driver and used the code based upon the out-of-tree r8152 driver maintained by Realtek.

With [1]this merge to the Linux networking subsystem's "net-next" Git branch, the RTL8159 USB network adapters should be working.

It should be noted there are some firmware obstacles to deal with but hopefully shortly the necessary firmware will appear in the linux-firmware.git branch. Koblitz noted in the merge:

"The RTL8159 requires firmware for the PHY in order to achieve a 10GBit link speed. Without firmware, only 5GBit were achieved. The firmware can be extracted from the out-of-tree r8152 driver-code where it is stored in the ram17 u8-array. Code is added to use the existing firmware upload mechanism of the driver for the RTL8157/9 PHY firmware code. The firmware will be submitted separately to linux-firmware."

So look for this mainline Realtek RTL8159 support with Linux 7.2+.

The RTL8159 is already found within some USB network adapters, some of which retail for under $100 USD such as the XikeStor 10G USB3.2+ adapter for [2]$99 USD on Amazon (affiliate link).



[1] https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/netdev/net-next.git/commit/?id=c978803c5d4dc0501efcdb32df055b35bd81ba27

[2] https://amzn.to/4dbZqtA