... adapter. So does that mean that I can't use the wireless adapter on my Toshiba laptop to get onto the internet in gNewSense? If so, it slightly limits gNewSense's usefulness to me ...

Which wireless adapter is it? And welcome to LQ

It's an Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG

... and thanks for the welcome XavierP!

Andrew Corser

Well Brian Brazil needs to get online more!! Couple of links for you:
http://intellinuxwireless.org/
http://www.google.com/search?q=+Inte...nt=iceweasel-a

It seems that:
so it should work natively.

If you do need to search for drivers, putting in the hardware details and then the word linux is often a good start - so I searched for " Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG linux".

And welcomes is what I do best!

In addition to the driver, there is a firmware file(s) that are installed separately and if those aren't there, the wireless card won't work. Most of the recent versions of distros will install both the driver and the firmware by default, but if it isn't you can get it from the Intel wireless site link in XavierP's post.

By the way, I'm posting this courtesy of an Intel 3945 wireless card, so they definitely do work in linux.

Thanks very much to both XavierP and Hangdog42.

I went on to the IntelLinuxWireless.org site, and it said that the iwlwifi was in kernels 2.6.24 and up, so a download wasn't needed. I didn't know what that meant until I later restarted and booted into gNewSense, so I downloaded the driver and one of the mac80211 files. When I got into gNewSense I missed the kernel number, but I double clicked on the two downloaded archives, and saw folder and files which meant little to me, apart from the README file. Only trouble was it was an "unknown" file type, and didn't seem to want to open in Writer.

So I rebooted, and found that the kernel of the gNewSense I have loaded WAS 2.6.24, but there is no wireless adapter showing. How do I get it to see it? Or should I try some other approach?

Many thanks in anticipation!

Andrew C

Check the output of lsmod and see if iwl3945 is there. If not, become root and load the driver with modprobe iwl3945. You'll just get a prompt back if all goes well. If not, then post the errors you're seeing.

Now what I don't know is if gNewSense would actually allow the iwl3945 driver since the firmware is not free. Intel allows it to be freely distributed, but it is most definitely not open source. From looking at their wiki, there is a strong possibility that gNewSense won't work with this chipset.

I doubt if gNewsense will have that driver included also. Being a newbie to Linux, that may not be the best linux distro to start with. It may be possible to get it working with gNewsense but may take awhile.

... a bit wrong. This was Brian's actual reply to me:

"The iwl3945 depends on non-free firmware, so will not work on gNewSense."

Which, Hnagdog42, is what you suggest.

Thanks for your comment, Saptech; could you suggest another GNU/Linux distro that a newbie, interested in the use of Linux in a school, could use to get to know how it all works, that would also let me use the iw3945 firmware so I can get on-line in Linux using my Toshiba laptop's built in iw3945?

Thanks.

(Everyone's so helpful about Linux - it's really great!!)

Andrew C

I would suggest giving Ubuntu (or the variants) a try. They are based on Debian and so shouldn't give you too much of a learning curve from gNewSense.

Actually, I suspect this isn't entirely correct either. The guts of any Linux distro are actually fairly similar, so it is likely that you could get your wireless card working on gNewSense. However, I also suspect it would involve some work that a new user wouldn't be very comfortable with, like compiling your own kernel. All in all, following XavierP's advice is probably the best way to go. The new Linux users I've introduced to one of the *buntus have generally been pretty happy with it.

Try one of the *buntus, Mandriva One 2009, and Mint Linux's latest version. I'm sure one or all of these may have the driver installed by default or fairly easy to install it. Read their website and search for that driver info on the distro you're thinking of using.

Thanks to all for your suggestions: I am now using Ubuntu and the wireless is working fine. My only problem now is that I don't understand how to do Linux installations ... they don't seem quite the same as just finding setup.exe as in Windows ... I will search some more (using Ubuntu rather than Windows) now that I am on-line!

Thanks again.

Andrew C

The easiest way to install software in Ubuntu is with the Synaptic Package manager. You use this to search for the software you want to install, then it will download and install everything needed to run it. It is actually a lot easier than in the Windows world (at least in my opinion).