RTL8188EE fails every second boot

[kotee]

It is a long-standing issue repeatable at any Linux: cold boot can result in a non-functioning Wi-Fi card. It is detectable by lspci and accessible by iwconfig wlp4s0 up, but produces no results through iw wlp4s0 scan.

It is, though, easily mitigated by sending the laptop to suspend and immediate wakeup.

As soon as it is easily fixable it is not a much of a problem, but nevertheless, it is clearly an undesirable malfunction. On Windows it was okay, but I do not have any Win installation for a long time.

What can be tested or done to find the root cause?