Wireless Card in Ubuntu 11.04

It will probably work in Ubuntu 11.04, but you should check first, by booting from the Ubuntu Desktop Install CD (or the DVD), selecting Try Ubuntu (rather than Install Ubuntu), and seeing if you can get your wireless card to work in the live CD environment. It's possible that it will simply work out of the box without any special customization in Ubuntu 11.04. Please note that instructions requiring rebooting would have to be modified to use in a live CD environment, since changes made to a live CD system do not survive shutdowns/reboots.

If it works in the live CD system, it will probably work in an installed (in this case, upgraded-to) Ubuntu 11.04 system.

Please note that I'm only advising that you use the live CD for testing purposes. When you actually want to migrate to 11.04, you should do it by upgrading your 10.04 installation to 10.10, and then upgrading that 10.10 installation to 11.04. (Upgrading to 10.10 first is necessary because Ubuntu 11.04 is not a long-term support release. Since 10.04 is an LTS release, you can upgrade it to the next release, which is 10.10, or to the next LTS release, which will be numbered 12.04 and won't come out for another year.) You can perform both these upgrades in the Update Manager. If you want to maximize the chance that things will work without problems, you might want to also download and burn an Ubuntu 10.10 CD image, boot from it selecting Try Ubuntu, and see if the wireless works in it (since you'll want to have an Internet connection available for upgrading from Ubuntu 10.10 to Ubuntu 11.04). If you have the ability to connect your computer to the Internet with an Ethernet cable in the even that wireless is temporarily broken, however, then there would be no reason whatsoever for taking that extra precautionary step.

Hello Eliah,

Some time ago I formulated a question about the functionality of a wireless card on ubuntu 11.04 to which you kindly responded.
I've been doubtful about how to proceed with the upgrade process(from 10.04 to 11.04) because of some of the comments in your response, more precisely this one:

"you might want to also download and burn an Ubuntu 10.10 CD image, boot from it selecting Try Ubuntu, and see if the wireless works in it"

I became very concerned about it because I took for granted the fact that my wireless card will work on ubuntu 10.10. My reasoning for this is that I thought that 10.04 and 10.10 were fundamentally the same (being 10.10 the same as 10.04 + some new additions), Given this, I had thought that by using the Update Manager on 10.04 to update to 10.10 would preserve the
Wireless Drivers I had installed intact, and therefore I would have no problems with my wireless card as a result from upgrading to 10.10 this way.

On the other hand, I don't think(although I may be completely wrong) that my wireless card will work on 10.10 using the live CD because the driver would be missing?(right?) Unless of course 10.10 now incorporates it as default. I know little about this, So I'm open to all the advice I can get.

One last thing, before I become totally annoying, I noticed that all my previous questions regarding wireless devices were placed under the category: "gnome-nettool", Does that mean drivers were made for gnome only? Therefore there would be no chance whatsoever for wireless devices like mine to work in Unity?

Thank you very much for your time, Sir !

> I became very concerned about it because I took for granted
> the fact that my wireless card will work on ubuntu 10.10.

Since it works in 10.04 LTS, it will probably work in 10.10, but since there is no supported (or likely effective) way to downgrade to a previous release, it's worthwhile to boot from the live CD and test Ubuntu 10.10.

> I had thought that by using the Update Manager on 10.04 to
> update to 10.10 would preserve the Wireless Drivers I had
> installed intact

There's a pretty good chance that will happen. If it doesn't, then it's very likely that by repeating the procedure you had used to install the driver in the first place, you'll be able to get it to work again in Ubuntu 10.10.

> On the other hand, I don't think(although I may be completely
> wrong) that my wireless card will work on 10.10 using the live
> CD because the driver would be missing?(right?) Unless of
> course 10.10 now incorporates it as default. I know little
> about this, So I'm open to all the advice I can get.

Ubuntu 10.10 might automatically work with your wireless card, but if it doesn't, then you can simply follow the instructions for installing the driver, in the live CD system. Occasionally such instructions have rebooting as one of the steps, and if that is the case, then you cannot follow them verbatim. However, it is typically possible to replace an instruction to reboot with an instruction to manually perform the relevant actions that are automatically undertaken during a reboot. If you need help with this, please post again.

> One last thing, before I become totally annoying

Please feel free to ask as many question as you like. So long as they are related to Ubuntu, https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu is an appropriate place to ask them. Sometimes we may refer you to another resource online, if your question has been covered extensively and well elsewhere; sometimes we may give advice that requires some degree of effort on your part in order to apply; sometimes we may ask you to post a separate question, if the question you're asking is about a new topic. But you needn't fear becoming "annoying" by seeking to further your knowledge of Ubuntu, or of the way that support is provided in this forum.

> I noticed that all my previous questions regarding wireless
> devices were placed under the category: "gnome-nettool",
> Does that mean drivers were made for gnome only?

No.

The primary purpose of classifying questions is to label them in a way so that people with knowledge or experience relevant to any particular question will have their attention called to it. So while a bug report should almost always be labeled as affecting whatever package actually contains the bug (i.e., whatever package would have to be modified to fix the bug), a question should be labeled in such a way as to best identify the area(s) of expertise relevant to the question. Often, these would be the same package, but sometimes they would not.

For this reason, most general networking questions are classified as being about the package gnome-nettool. The program gnome-nettool provides facilities for network troubleshooting and also provides access to network configuration, which is probably why it has come to be the package against which general networking questions are classified. But a question classified as being "about" gnome-nettool is not necessarily a question in which the package gnome-nettool is actually used.

If I got a networking question from someone using Ubuntu Server (where by default there is no GUI) or Kubuntu (or Xubuntu or Lubuntu or a command-line only system), I would probably not classify it as being about gnome-nettool. I'm not sure whether or not that would be correct, though.

So, in summary, your question was classified as being about the source package gnome-nettool not because it was GNOME-specific, but because it was about networking and no more specific classification made sense at the time. Your wireless drivers should continue working even if you stop using GNOME.

> Therefore there would be no chance whatsoever for
> wireless devices like mine to work in Unity?

An Ubuntu system using Unity is still using GNOME. Unity is an alternative to the GNOME Shell. It's still a GNOME system. To state it in a slightly oversimplified way: It's just that one component that differs from a standard GNOME system. See http://www.jonobacon.org/2010/10/25/ubuntu-11-04-to-ship-unity/. Please note also that, on an Ubuntu system with Unity, all the regular GNOME components are still installed, and you can use a more standard GNOME interface (without Unity) by logging on with session type "Ubuntu Desktop Edition" / "Ubuntu Classic Desktop" (in versions before 11.04) or "Ubuntu Classic" (in 11.04).

Thus, your wireless card's support is not limited to GNOME, but even if it were limited to GNOME, it would still work fine when you use a Unity desktop.

Hola José

This link

http://steveswinsburg.wordpress.com/2011/03/12/how-to-install-a-d-link-dwa-525-wireless-network-card-in-ubuntu-10-04/

provides instructions that work perfectly under 11.10 on my Dell with a D-Link DWA-525 recently installed.

For me that little pair of edits to os/linux/config.mk were essential.

The big hassle (well not so big but still) is you have to rebuild / reinstall for every kernel upgrade.