[clue-tech] Kubuntu 8.10 - enable wireless

[Jed S. Baer]

On Thu, 22 Jan 2009 09:49:46 -0700
Diane Williams wrote:

> This is my first attempt at becoming a Linux user. Installed Kubuntu
> 8.10 from the CD successfully because the install program was smart
> enough to do all the work for me. I am dual booting with Windows Vista
> on an HP dv6871us laptop. Have been googling but so far I cannot find
> current information that I understand to enable a wireless Internet
> connection.

First thing is to identify your wireless hardware. In Windoze, I think
you use control panel to go to wherever it is where you get to the device
manager, and can look at a hardware listing. You should be able to find
at least the make/model of your wireless adapter. From there, finding the
actual wireless chipset should be easy (or not, but it's where to start).

Or, in Linux, open up Konsole (this will be in the main menu, under
"System", unless the KDE folks have twiddled the menu structure around
since 3.5, or the Kubuntu people have twiddled it since 8.04), and at the
command prompt, issue the lspci command. Paste that output to the list.

> I can find the adept program but don't know how to proceed to enable
> wireless.

Adept is a package manager. You might wind up needing to use it to
install something.

> Would come to installfest tomorrow but I have a college class from 9 -
> noon on Saturdays.

Well, as Dennis said, you can arrive late.

Also, I've found that knetworkmanager is useless. Regrettable, and maybe
fixed in a newer version than I'm using. I find this curious, since I
can't image the developers releasing something 100% non-functional, so I
assume it works fine on some percantage of machines -- just not my
laptop, for example. I don't know a good GUI replacement for it, without
getting into <SHUDDER> Gnome. And yes, it completely sucks that at this
stage of the game, you have to use the command line. I don't mind it
myself, but I recognize the barrier to entry it creates.

FWIW, wireless on my laptop works fine in Ubuntu 8.04 -- that is after I
manually edited the appropriate config file, which isn't actually
difficult at all.

But first, you'll need to identify what chipset you have, and get
appropriate drivers installed, perhaps using ndiswrapper. After that, it
might be that Knetworkmanager will do the job for you. But we have a
backup plan if it doesn't.

jed