Except for Manjaro, in every distro, my system freezes when I want to connect to the wifi.
lsusb output:
...
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 0bda:8179 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8188EUS 802.11n Wireless Network Adapter
...
mhwd says I have “network-r8168” installed.
Any help would be appreciated.
The r8168 is the panacea of the RealTek NIC drivers that works enough… until it does not.
It could be related to which application is managing your network connectivity. I find that Network Manager tends to break depending on if I am in Debian SID or Arch. Sometimes it will work in one but not the other until an update.
On Arch, I have been using dhcpd more. In Debian, I have the best of luck with Network Manager.
Look to see what is happening on the next reboot by running sudo journalctl -b 1
For more Journalctl hackery, check