Install your wireless adapter driver!

Hello Ubuntu and Kubuntu friends,

It seems that a lot of you are facing a problem with your wireless cards. If you already have a problem then it is very good it is just a wireless driver. In the other hand Ubuntu supports almost 90% of wireless cards and built-in wireless adapters which means that you just don't have enough luck :). Like i said most of wireless adapters will work out-of-the-box but there are some stubborn ones.

There are a few ways to solve a problem.

Step 1.

The first thing you need to do, if you already do not know, is to find out what is your wireless adapter manufacturer and model. Open your Terminal/Konsole and type:

After that you will get something like this

Step 2.

You will see that my wireless card model is Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN. In my case my wireless card works out-of-the-box but we will pretend that it does not.

Step 3.

First possibility is to go to Hardware drivers and to see if maybe you can install your driver from over there. That is the same place where you go when you want to install your video driver for Ati or nVidia. If you find your wireless adapter in the list install it, reboot you system and it should work.

Step 4.

Second solution might be to go to your wireless adapter manufacturer and download drivers for Linux. After you download it unpack it and follow the instructions on how to install it. That instruction you can mostly find in your unpacked folder. But some manufacturers just does not support Linux drivers and you need to install Windows driver and for all of you with this situation go to step 5.

Step 5.

This is the step for people who didn't succeed in Step 3 and 4. There is a tool with which you can use your wireless card driver even with your Windows drivers. I am not sure how big is a difference between Vista and XP drivers so use XP drivers just in case. I will download drivers for my wireless device from Intel's website. When you download it unpack it.

Step 6.

We need to install that program and it's name is Windows Wireless Drivers. You can find this program into the repositories and the only thing you need to do is to go to Synaptic, Ubuntu Software center, Adept or Kpackagekit and type the name and just click install.

If you want to use Konsole/Terminal type:

and it will install everything.

Step 7.

Start your Windows Wireless Drivers program. Click install new driver.

Step 8.

Pick your .inf file from unpacked folder.

Step 9.

Click install button and finish your installation. After system reboot your wireless driver should work.

Like i said this will work with almost 99% of wireless adapters. In the case that you still can not make it working try with the Google search.

I hope this will help you.

Thank you for reading,