Ubuntu: Wireless question

[JSFord]

I recently installed Ubuntu 10.04 on a laptop and it wont connect to my wireless network. a neighbor has their own wireless and it connects to theirs, but not mine. any ideas guys?

-Joe

 

[MindoverMaster]

Make sure you have it set to the right security setting. WPA or WPA2. Neither of them are back compatible.

 

[MrMarcDee]

Wireless on Linux is often a pain in the ***. What kind of laptop do you have? More importantly what brand is the wireless device? Type the command 'lspci' in a terminal as root and look for your wireless device in the output. Can you connect to a wired network? What program are you using to try and connect to the wireless network? Can you 'see' the wireless network but just can't connect?

It may be a drivers problem. Some wireless devices have proprietary drivers. Answers some of those questions for me so I can help you out more.

Marc

 

[Jayce]

Yeah, wireless is getting better by the day but it still can leave people with headaches when it comes to Linux. Atheros and Intel are the two "safe" brands that you can go with, for the most part. While I have had good luck with some Broadcom chips, I avoid them like the plague. I've even had issues with their wired NIC's on Windows so I choke it up to the company needing to pull some more weight than them just being neglectful over their Linux support.

I had a Broadcom in my laptop and had the worst wireless experience ever. It would connect to some WPA networks, but not others. Even wireless networks I set up, so I knew all of the specific settings and everything. It would randomly disconnect me every few minutes unwarranted, etc. I went on Ebay and found an Intel BGN card for about 14 dollars. Put that in and all of my problems were gone.

The point of the above story is while it can be a headache to deal with some wireless issues, you can often resolve the issue by putting in your own wireless card if you can find one as cheap as I did, which I'm sure is pretty easy with google shopping and ebay sites. There's only so much support you can get with chips with closed source drivers like Broadcom. However, if memory serves me I think an open source driver for Broadcom was just released. About time, Broadcom...

 

[MindoverMaster]

Wireless works fine on my ASUS netbook EEE 1005HA and ASUS EEE Box 1006. (cant remember lettering)

I'm not sure what brand they have, but it worked OOTB.

 

[Jayce]

Fire up a terminal and run lspci. At the bottom you should see your network devices. Curious on what brand they are...

 

[MindoverMaster]

My netbook has Atheros AR9285. My EEE Box uses exactly the same.

 

[Jayce]

Nice. Atheros is one of the better brands to go with. Them + Intel are the ones I've had the most success with. After 8.04 my Realtek support increased dramatically as well, but I rarely come across them anymore except the RTL8187B chipset. That one is still pretty common in a lot of low end USB Wireless G adapters.

 

[MindoverMaster]

Wasn't sure myself witch I had, but it worked fine.