Asus motherboards that use Realtek RTL8125 network adapters

I found since switching to Linux that if your motherboard has a Realtek RTL8125 wired network adapter every Linux distro is installing the r8169 driver that makes your wired connection not work. It turns out this driver is 23 years old. A few weeks ago I was using Mint Cinnamon and had the same issue. I’m currently using Bazzite and still the same issue.

I was able to fix the issue by downloading a older Linux driver (r8125) from the Realtek website and installing it. Then blacklisting the r8169 driver. The problem is once the kernel updates it will break that work around. I’ve tried contacting Realtek, Asus and Micro Center where I bought the motherboard to no avail in hopes of Realtek releasing an updated driver that works. Or maybe Asus and or Micro Center talking to Realtek to update the driver.

The driver used to operate the network adapter for Windows works fine. The driver for the wireless adapter for Linux works fine. So you’re not totally w/o an internet connection

Maybe all the Linux distros need to push the old r8125 driver instead of the broken r8169 driver to fix this issue