ubuntu on compal gl30

So i just installed Ubuntu on my laptop and so far everything works real nice, except the wireless. Now i'm completely new to Linux, but was able to install madwifi and everything, but I'm beginning to think that it's not even finding my wifi card from a hardware standpoint. The device simply doesn't look like it exits. For those not familier with this laptop it ha a manual wireless switch, which was something I had trouble with even in windows as I do believe it also needs drivers, so I was wondering if anyone was able to get an atheros wifi card working on this computer?

 

You should be able to install "networkmanager" if you're using gnome. That is what got the wireless working for me. (I actually use KDE, so I installed knetworkmanager. They should be very similar, though.) Make sure you're using Ubuntu 6.10. The LTS 6.06 doesn't have the networkmanager tools I believe.

 

how did u install the driver for your card? did u need to us ndiswrapper or was it automaticaly installed?

 

First - what kind of wireless card do you have? If you have the Intel wireless, then installing network-manager, and network-manager-gnome packages will fix any issues.

 

gigabyte wlan card model# gn-wi01gt
pretty sure it's an atheros based chip

 

Yeah, sorry, I didnt read your original post correctly. I haven't had much expereince with Atheros cards. When my old Acer had one, I had to use NDISwrapper to get it running.

 

Atheros cards should use the madwifi driver, and should be supported natively. At least I think that's the case. I'm positive that Atheros cards are supported without needing ndiswrapper. I do know that my Intel card was automatically detected and configured without any issues.

You can type "iwconfig" at a console prompt. If anything is returned besides "eth0: no wireless extensions found" type lines, then you have your driver installed fine. You really should be able to just install the networkmanager and get it all working.

 

Code:

 # lspci 

will tell you what kind of wireless chipset you have. At least it does for me. I don't use ubuntu, I use sidux, but for me it was as simple as

Code:

 # m-a a-i madwifi 

to get the madwifi driver built and installed on my system because my distro didn't ship the built driver.

 

yea I ended u8p just using Ndiswrapper because for some reason madwifi doesn't work with this card, you need to update the snapshot but that didn't seem to help at all either. IDK if anyone did get this card working with Madwifi that would be nice haveing a native wifi instead , but for now ndiswrapper words fine.

 

Between these two helpful bits of advise from our Linux pros, you should be up and running. Let us know if not.

 

Atheros cards should not require Ndiswrapper; many Linux users specifically go for Atheros cards because they are Linux friendly after you install madwifi. That being said, assuming you're using Ubuntu Edgy 6.10, network manager should really fix anything.

http://madwifi.org/wiki/Compatibility

According to that website, your card is supported by madwifi, and all you have to do is install the latest madwifi snapshot and network-manager as suggested earlier. Hope this helps. Ndiswrapper can be quite slow.