Bug#661860: firmware-realtek: Intermittent problems with rtl8192cufw.bin
 

That's possible. It might be a driver issue instead of a firmware issue. How can I tell for sure?

Ben Hutchings <ben@decadent.org.uk> wrote:
On Thu, 2012-03-01 at 17:24 -0700, Soren Stoutner wrote:
> Package: firmware-realtek
> Version: 0.35
> Severity: important
[...]
> In addition, signal strength is incredibly weak, as compared with the
> Windows 7 driver running on the same hardware. This is consistant and
> at least half the signal strength observed in Windows.
[...]

What makes you think the Windows driver is using different firmware?
Normally a device will run the same firmware regardless of the driver
being used.

Ben.

--
Ben Hutchings
One of the nice things about standards is that there are so many of them.