Gfilui

I am having trouble trying to using my wifi card on a newer HP Stream 11.
The issue is known and apparently fixed for the older model by installing the newer realtek drivers avaiable here: https://github.com/lwfinger/rtlwifi_new

However, this solution is not working as explained in other posts.

I am using Ubuntu Mate 16.04 beta 2 64 bit, I know it's not advisable to use an unstable distribution but I tested it on another notebook and found it very usable already, anyway I have the same issues with 15.10 64 bit and linux mint 17.3 xfce 32 bit

After installing the new realtek drivers and running the commands

sudo modprobe -rv rtl8723be
sudo modprobe -v rtl8723be ant_sel=1

I am finally able to connect to wifi, with decent performance (I am still not sure what ant_sel actually does, and if 1 or 2 is better or even if other values are permitted)

first of all, How can I make these changes permanently without having to re-run the commands everytime I boot?
Also, wifi seems to be slower than on my main pc. How can that be?

thank you, if anyone has found a better workaround I would be very grateful to know
I have been reading here and on forums for hours now but I still can't find a definitive solution

The driver parameter ant_sel is to select one or the other of two antenna connections. Generally, one works well and the other doesn't work at all. You can test with:

sudo modprobe -rv rtl8723be
sudo modprobe -v rtl8723be ant_sel=2

How is the performance?

Then try:

sudo modprobe -rv rtl8723be
sudo modprobe -v rtl8723be ant_sel=1

Which is better? Set the parameter permanently with:

sudo -i
echo "options rtl8723be ant_sel=1" > /etc/modprobe.d/rtl8723be.conf
exit 

Of course, specify the setting that yields the best performance from your experiment above.

As to why the performance is better in Windows, they are completely different drivers. Some things work better in Linux and some things work better in Windows.