Ubuntu on Acer Aspire 5315

Hello, everyone. I have an Acer Aspire 5315 laptop on which I installed Ubuntu (it had Windows Vista Home originally). I was surprised at how everything just seemed to work right off the bat. Ubuntu loaded all the drivers, and it's working quite well... except for one thing. The wireless connection is randomly dropping. Now, this was happening here and there even before Ubuntu was installed, but since Ubuntu was installed, it's happening much more frequently. Some days, the wireless will work fine all day, and some days, it will drop the connection constantly and will NOT reconnect. Restarting the computer sometimes helps, but most of the time it does not. I took the laptop to a computer repair shop and the guy told me "Linux doesn't 'play well' with Acer laptops".. which I thought was a bit odd. In any case... I am wondering if you guys think the problem is Ubuntu, or if the wireless card may be borked. The wireless card is an "Atheros" card, but I'm not quite sure which one. That brings me to one more question:

Is there a linux program that is equivalent to something like the program "Everest"? Everest shows very detailed information about what hardware is in the computer, and I'd really like to find out as I'm wanting to upgrade some of the components on this laptop. I'd also like to find out what type of slots are available on the motherboard -- specifically, if there is a cardbus slot. The current wireless card is in a mini pci express slot, but I'm trying to find out if a cardbus wireless card would be supported, as well. Thanks for your time!

edited to add: we have other laptops in the home that are working fine with our wireless (no dropping the connection), so I've ruled out that there is anything wrong with the actual wireless service.

 

You could try entering "lspci" in a terminal. This should tell you what devices are hooked up to your pci slots.

 

I tried Ubuntu once, and the first problem I had with it was my wireless. After hours of searching and research I finally got it working, but it seemed like everything I wanted to do with Ubuntu took hours of research so I finally quit. I probably didn't give it enough of a chance, but that learning curve is painful.

Anyway, I think you need to figure out the name of your wireless adapter and search for "problems with wireless adapter...in ubuntu..."
There will probably be some info. You could also search for drivers for your device. My problem was a driver issue and it was kind of a convoluted way of fixing it, but I can't remember the details.
I remember it was a 64 bit OS, and drivers for a lot of things were scarce for the 64 bit systems a couple of years ago.

 

Thank you droes! I was thinking there was something I could type in a terminal to find that out, but I wasn't sure what it was.

 

smilinsteve - Well, I'm thinking that if there was an issue with the driver, I wouldn't have days where I can stay connected perfectly. I'm not sure.. I could be wrong about that. What I'm thinking is that the wireless signal could be weak, and that the card might not be that great... the combination of those two might be the problem. But again, i could be wrong. When i find out what card i have, exactly, I'll definitely do some searching around.. thank you!!

 

Sounds to me like a problem with the card or the router. You said this issue happened before you installed linux...

trouble shoot 101..
#1.does this happen on other computers too?
#2.does this happen on other operating systems?
#3.does this happen on other routers?

Use that formula for this problem to isolate and trouble shoot.

 

directeuphorium.. thank you for your reply. This doesn't happen on other wireless laptops that we use in the home & the issue was there with Windows Vista, as well, which I mentioned in my original post. I haven't tried any other OS's besides Ubuntu and Vista. I don't own any other Microsoft OS's, but I suppose I could test on a different Linux distro if you think that would help? As for your third question, I don't have another router to test on, but I figured since the other laptops that use wireless are working fine, that the router was not the problem.

I am also leaning towards it being a problem with the card. I have asked in the Acer forum for suggestions on what type of card to get.. just waiting on that answer. I really hope that fixes the problem. The laptop belongs to my 10 year old daughter, and having a highly frustrated 10 year old (because she keeps getting disco'd) is not pretty.. lol! Thanks again!

ps- I thought it was important to mention that one of the other laptops that is working fine with the wireless is also running Ubuntu. That particular laptop is a Compaq, however.

 

At my house, we have two pc's that have no problem with wireless, and a mac that has frequent disconnection problem. It turns out that there is a known issue with mac's and this netgear router. So, just because some notebooks work fine with your router, does not mean you don't have a router issue. There is something about the compatability of the router settings and the wireless settings, and I'm not very expert in that area, so I will refrain from talking about stuff I don't know about.
Anyway, when you get disconnected, can you reset the router and get back on?

 

There are three parts into wireless conenction, the hardware, the driver, and the program. Obviously the hardware and the driver work fine. Has to be the program. How do you control the connection? Using a program like Network manager? Using Ifup?