can't find asus wifi after wiping W10 for mint

[geek at uniserve.com]

my friend said sure go ahead and wipe windows 10 and install mint just 
so you save my files and put them back on. all of that was routine and 
worked ok except that the wifi quit. I plugged a little usb wifi radio 
in and it was recognized and works fine. I've looked in dmidecode and 
in dmesg for hints. in dmesg is this line:


 19.227601] input: Asus Wireless Radio Control as 
/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/ATK4002:00/input/input14

The manufacturer's model number is X555L.

after booting and when inserting the usb radio I get this in dmesg:

182.236130] usb 2-1: new high-speed USB device number 5 using xhci_hcd
[  182.384969] usb 2-1: New USB device found, idVendor=0bda, 
idProduct=8179
[  182.384976] usb 2-1: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, 
SerialNumber=3
[  182.384979] usb 2-1: Product: 802.11n WLAN NIC
[  182.384983] usb 2-1: Manufacturer: Realtek
[  183.430520] cfg80211: Loading compiled-in X.509 certificates for 
regulatory database
[  183.430786] cfg80211: Loaded X.509 cert 'sforshee: 
00b28ddf47aef9cea7'
[  183.435667] r8188eu: module is from the staging directory, the 
quality is unknown, you have been warned.
[  183.436901] Chip Version Info: 
CHIP_8188E_Normal_Chip_TSMC_D_CUT_1T1R_RomVer(0)
[  183.462956] usbcore: registered new interface driver r8188eu
[  183.466950] r8188eu 2-1:1.0 wlx0013ef8a37a2: renamed from wlan0
[  183.491094] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlx0013ef8a37a2: link is not 
ready
[  183.928176] MAC Address = 00:13:ef:8a:37:a2
[  183.929477] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlx0013ef8a37a2: link is not 
ready
[  183.988651] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_UP): wlx0013ef8a37a2: link is not 
ready
[  186.737865] R8188EU: assoc success
[  187.746447] IPv6: ADDRCONF(NETDEV_CHANGE): wlx0013ef8a37a2: link 
becomes

which seems ordinary enough. But no on-board wifi, which was working 
ok before.


Searching for "Asus Wireless Radio Control" gives one possible 
relevant hit:

https://lwn.net/Articles/667892/ from 2015 but that does not suggest 
anything to me.

ifconfig shows:
enp2s0    Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr f0:79:59:17:96:76
          UP BROADCAST MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:0 (0.0 B)  TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

lo        Link encap:Local Loopback
          inet addr:127.0.0.1  Mask:255.0.0.0
          inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
          UP LOOPBACK RUNNING  MTU:65536  Metric:1
          RX packets:6834 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:6834 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:1114001 (1.1 MB)  TX bytes:1114001 (1.1 MB)

wlx0013ef8a37a2 Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:13:ef:8a:37:a2
          inet addr:192.168.1.121  Bcast:192.168.1.255  
Mask:255.255.255.0
          inet6 addr: fe80::653d:ca63:17ac:ad4d/64 Scope:Link
          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:98127 errors:0 dropped:3920 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:70831 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
          RX bytes:95245983 (95.2 MB)  TX bytes:11717925 (11.7 MB)


where the bottom interface is the usb wifi.

uname -a
Linux soby-X555LA 4.15.0-46-generic #49~16.04.1-Ubuntu SMP Tue Feb 12 
17:45:24 UTC 2019 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux



Does anyone have a suggestion where to look? I've followed the 
instructions for turning airplane mode on and off to no effect.


D