Enabling an external USB Wi-Fi dongle on a Linux machine is a skill that is hardly in high demand these days — until you have a Wi-Fi-deficient machine, and you want to add it to your wireless network. That was the exact problem I faced when I discovered an old Edimax EW-7811Un Wi-Fi dongle in a storage box, and I decided to use it with my Fujitsu Fureo S720 home server. In the glorious Raspberry Pi 1 days, the dongle was the way to add Wi-Fi functionality to this single-board computer, and I did it so many times that I could do it with my eyes closed.
This time around, though, I had to do some digging to jog my memory. And while going through the process of setting up the dongle, I’ve decided to write down the steps for future reference.