I am new to Linux. I have been a Windows user for many years and just recently heard of and installed Linux. A friend recommended Ubuntu for me; I downloaded it last night and installed it. I have a dual-boot system with Ubuntu and Win XP Pro on my laptop.

I ran Ubuntu from the CD before I installed it and was impressed; I have a USB Compaq mouse hooked up to my laptop. It worked during the CD running of Ubuntu, however now that I have Ubuntu it installed it won't work.

I am also having problems with my wireless network adapter, a Broadcom 802.11b/g WLAN. I depend on this adapter for my internet connection; the only way I am on this forum currently is by running XP Pro.

Could someone please help me on this? I can't wait to start using Linux for the internet, not just for the applications. Any answer would be helpful. I am not yet very familiar with Linux (as I just installed it this morning), but I hope to learn and contribute to it.

Thanks

Broadcom wifi devices are a problem, and a very popular problem as it turns out. It is a problem that can be resoloved fairly easily with a program named "ndiswrapper" plus your Windows driver files (both the .inf and the .sys).

Step one is to find out the exact chipset version - usually 4306 or 4318, but there are many others. To do this in Linux, open a terminal and enter:
This should list the specific Broadcom chip being used.

Step 2 is to do a search here in Linuxquestions. It's been covered pretty well.

Step 3 come back with other questions, comments, or the solution that helped you to get on the 'net !!

Where do I copy the .inf and .sys drivers to? Is there a certain directory they need to be in?

You can put them anywhere. Usually you'll have some sort of a Downloads directory which may be a good place. the importan thing is to tell ndiswrapper where they are when you use its install option. From there ndiswrapper will put them where they need to be.