I have finally managed to move from Windows to Linux. I’ve been very frustrated lately with software providers trying to control my desktop (Apple at least equals Microsoft in irritating control tactics). Ubuntu is a Linux distribution that explicitly aims to make Linux accessible to normal people (”Linux for Human Beings” is their phrase, not mine), and they are well on their way to success. The one issue I had with installing it was that my wireless card didn’t automatically work (imagine, a Linux installation where the *only* thing that didn’t work automatically was my wireless card!).

My biggest problem in finding a solution is that a lot of the information that’s out there is quite outdated. I spent quite a bit of time following how-tos written for old versions of Ubuntu. But I did eventually find a solution, a very simple one at that, and I want to share it with y’all

Details here: http://teragram.furiousthinking.org/?p=90

Ubuntu does now (Edgy Eft) come with the Intel(R) PRO/Wireless drivers by default but, from what I gather, they don’t work with WPA encryption by default. Here are the steps I took to get my Dell Latitude D600 connected to my home WPA wireless network. (This works when starting from a clean, updated install, which you probably don’t have if you’ve been following the various how-tos that are out there to fix wireless access in previous versions of Ubuntu.)

• The first thing to try is hitting Fn-F2. This turns your wireless radio on/off (there doesn’t seem to be any easy way to detect which state it’s in). To be honest, this may be what fixed my connection, but the first time I tried it I had already been wading through the aforementioned how-tos, so who knows what state my system was in?

1. Install network-manager-gnome (or if you’re using Kubuntu – knetworkmanager). I did this via the Synaptic Package Manager (System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager, search for network-manager-gnome). This package depends on several others, most importantly network-manager, which will all be automatically installed with it.
2. Turn off all network connections in System -> Administration -> Networking
3. Restart
4. Left-click on the Network Manager icon in the Notification Area (top right of your screen). Any wireless networks in range should be visible.
5. (optional) There’s another network icon in the Notification Area. You can right-click it and hit “remove from panel” to get rid of it.

If you try this and it is/isn’t helpful, I’d love to hear from you, so please leave a comment.

Tg