@TomWeber 

Hi,

TP-Link usually doesn't disclose the designations of the chips used in their products.

But according to information that can be found on the Internet the TL-WN823N V1 uses the RTL8192CU, while later versions of the TL-WN823N use the RTL8192EU.

By the way, the driver itself is only a part of the equation. For a device to be recognized it is necessary that the correct hardware ID of the device is listed inside the driver.

If you are compiling the embedded Linux by yourself, then you should be able to manually add the hardware IDs of other unrecognized WLAN adapters that also use the RTL8192CU/EU chips to the source code.

The TL-WN823N V3 I own has the hardware ID 2357:0109. According to the date code within its serial number it was made in the year 2019. So I think the likelyhood of vendors still selling stock of older TL-WN823N V1 or V2 should be rather small.
 

  @woozle  Thanks for your reply! You are correct of course, we also found out (meaning: our supplier told us) about the importance of the vendor/USB-IDs. We don't compile the Linux-sources by ourselves, we have a supplier for our embedded-Linux board who provides us with the operating system. Unfortunately, we found that in the consumer market, you don't get the exact same model over a period of years, because the vendors change chipsets "randomly" and you cant tell by only reading the specs.

  @TomWeber 

I agree this is unpleasant, especially for Linux users. But there isn't really much a customer could do about it. 

Every "TL-WN823N Ver: 3.0" will have the same chip inside, but of course you would need to buy at a physical store where you can look at the sticker on the box to know whether the TL-WN823N they are selling is a "Ver: 3.0" or not.