Ubuntu

Ubuntu and Internal Wireless Card

Asked by Crowley

Hi all! I am new to Ubuntu and these (I guess you could call them) message boards. Please accept my apology as I do not know how to search these boards to see if my question has already been answered. It shows links above this but I cannot click on them. Anyway enough with the lengthy introduction.

I currently have a Dell Inspiron 600M laptop that is getting quite old. Windows is putting quite a strain on it and the few viruses and spyware here and there aren't helping matters either. My hope is to put Ubuntu (8.04 preferably) onto this machine in an attempt to prolong it's life span. However my only means of internet connection in through an internal wireless card. Will installing Ubuntu get rid of the drivers that enable the wireless card to work? If it will, is there anyway I can use the internal wireless card again after installing the OS?

Please help me,
Yours,
-Mike "Crowley"

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Fabián Rodríguez (magicfab) said : 		#1

Ubuntu won't use any existing wireless drivers. If you setup Ubuntu as dual boot or with Wubi, it will coexist with Win XP without overwriting it, if that what you want.

I'd suggest downloading a Live CD of Ubuntu 8.10 and try it to see if your wireless card works out of the box, chances are it does. Once booted, if it doesn't work, go to Applications > Accessories > Terminal and type:
sudo lshw -C network -short

Enter your password if prompted.

That will report back what networking devices you have, then paste the output here so we can help with that.

After installing the OS, yes, there is a high chance your wireless card can be used even with WIndows drivers (by using ndisgtk), if it doesn't work out of the box.

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Ernest Yang (ernest-atheros) said : 		#2

Can you follow the instructions here to try if this works for your dell Inspiron 600M? This requires ndiswrapper and your wireless windows driver (maybe you can download from dell support site).

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=368776
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=297092&highlight=edgy+dell+1390

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Mark Rijckenberg (markrijckenberg) said : 		#3

Hi,

Please install Ubuntu 8.10 from the LiveCD Session.

Then follow this procedure to try to get wireless to work:

http://blog.sampbar.com/2009/01/broadcom-bcm4318-ubuntu-intrepid/

If the procedure does not work, then first connect your network card to the wireless router using a LAN cable.

Then please follow this procedure:

Step 1: Open Terminal from "Applications->Accessories->
Terminal"

Step 2: Run the following commands (copy-paste each line below to the Terminal then hit <enter> after each line)

sudo iwlist scanning
nm-tool
iwconfig
ifconfig
sudo lshw -C network
lspci -nn
lsusb
uname -a
dmesg | grep ound
dmesg | grep illswitch

Step 3: Post results (cut/paste terminal output from each command) here

Regards,

Mark

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