connecting to wireless

Connecting to wireless shouldnt be any problem through ubuntu, or as it seemes to be in your case, kubuntu. i dont personally use kde, but ive ran the live cd on my laptop and it seemed to work just fine. however the specifics of doing so vary slightly depending on the network youre connecting to.

if you're connecting to an unsecured wireless network with DHCP, and it doesnt autoconnect, then just right click on the KNetworkManager Icon in the right hand corner, and see if it detects your wireless network. if it does, you should see it listed there under 'wireless networks'. then all youve gotta do is click on the wireless network listed and tada! your connected.

However, if youre connecting to a secured wireless network then you do the same thing as above, but when you click to select the wireless network, a window will pop up and require you to enter a passphrase/WEP key to log into the network. if you know who's network your connecting to, you can just ask them what the passphrase is set to, then enter it in the input box where it says 'passphrase.' if it's set to a WEP key, and not a passphrase then you'll have to talk with whoever maintains the network your trying to connect to to find out what the key is, and enter it the same way you would a password, just with the encryption set to WEP (hex) or WEP ASCII depending on the key style.

chances are the first option will work, but if by chance you don't see your network listed, then you may need to install some restricted drivers for your network adapter via the restricted driver manager (Kmenu > System Settings > Advanced tab > System Administration > Restricted drivers) if you check there and see any devices listed there, and if there are then see if you recognize one of them as your ethernet adapter (it will probably say network adapter somewhere in it). if your adapter is there, then click the administrator mode button atthe bottom of the window by the 'close' button, type in your password, then click the checkbox next to your adapter. it should pop up and ask if you want to use that driver, which of course you say yes. then adept should download and install the right driver for you and all you have to do is restart and try to connect again. (sometimes you wont be able to download the drivers nessecary for your hardware for whatever reason. if that be the case, it should let you browse for the nessecary file, and you can then pull it from another location such as a windows partition, or the windows driver cd for the adapter) hopefully that helps! happy ubuntu-ing!