I RTFM, and I still can't find it: How can I set up the wireless on an Inspiron 1150?

sajro · 02-11-2009, 06:52 PM

So, I just got a Dell Inspiron 1150. It's a great machine but tainted with Windows.

So, I ran a few liveCDs - Ubuntu Hardy Heron and Dreamlinux 3.2 - I had lying around and it ran well. BUT, no wireless.

I'm not sure of the model of the card. Hardinfo reports something like "Dell Wireless 1350" or similar. I believe it's a mini-PCI card. It works under XP so I know the card is ok. I think it's just a driver issue.

I'm going to be running this machine under Arch. I should be able to figure this out, but I've no experience with wireless networking - this is my first laptop.

Thanks in advance.

pljvaldez · 02-11-2009, 07:07 PM

I think in Ubuntu you just have to use the restricted driver manager.

It appears Puppy Linux worked out of the box on this laptop and used the bcm43xx module for wireless. Same guy also got Zenwalk working here. Here's a slackware link where they used Ndiswrapper.

So it appears like it can be done multiple ways.

sajro · 02-11-2009, 07:12 PM

Okay, I'll try out the method he used for Zenwalk. I don't quite understand the module-based one and I want to avoid ndiswrapper if possible.

alan_ri · 02-11-2009, 07:13 PM

Code:

lspci | grep Wireless

...will say useful things about your Wireless.Restricted driver manager in Ubuntu will not make wireless work sometimes,so manual driver installation would be necessary and probably a few more tweaks.