Just switched to linux and can't get my wireless to work. Sorry if this should be in 'wireless networks forum but I thought 'newbie would be more appropriate because I don't know my head from my arse on this!

My wlan card is: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [Airforce 54g] 802.11a/b/g PCI Express Tranciever

anyway I went to https://help.ubuntu.com/11.04/ubuntu...eshooting.html and followed the steps as far as I could. I will outline below:

in terminal entered: nm-tool -device shows up but state: unavailable

entered: sudo lshw -C network -wireless device listed but 'network DISABLED'. Driver (b43) exists

to check driver entered: sudo lsmod -configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=64 (don't know what this means but apparently it's the important bit)

entered: sudo iwconfig -got this:
lo no wireless extensions.

eth0 no wireless extensions.

wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSIDff/any
Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=off
Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff



Don't know what to do now, tried adding wireless connection (ssid)-didn't work. The only other suggestion I found was to make sure the wireless switch/button is on but when i press it nothing happens. usually when wireless is on the wireless light flashes or stays steady but no light comes on now. I don't know if that's because wireless isn't on or if it's because it's not recieving a signal.

Sorry this post is so long, I hope someone can help me!

look this is well documented ok are you in the opensource driver or the proprietary driver. any way i use the proprietary driver ok not the open source one.
please if not on the internet put your install disk in then go to ubuntus device driver manger and enable the proprietary driver put the firm ware in. make sure.
Ubuntu makes life so hard when things should be simple. if you are going to use the opensource driver it is good make sure you enable it.
if this is on a laptop do not hit the wrong function key and turn it off.

well it looks like i need to do some homework when it comes to using this OS. I tried to do what was suggested but got very confused. Going to try puppy linux!

Yes, you will need to do a little homework, because Linux is different. Not harder, just different.

The issue with Broadcom wireless is that, for a long time, Broadcom did not provide anything that Linux users could use. Now they do, but it's still quite proprietary and, depending on the distro, may take some hoop-jumping to get working.

You might encounter similar situations with certain printer makes and models.

This has nothing to do with Linux and its technology. It has to do with decisions made by hardware manufacturers.

When Linux first appeared, many of them decided that it was too insignificant to bother with. They are gradually realizing otherwise.

I am not an Ubuntu user but is there not an entry to install proprietary drivers for example from the OS itself? It was called "Additional Hardware" or something.

If a program is not available in the repositories, you can look for a compatible download.

For example, I can go to Opera dot com and download a *.deb (or an *.rpm if I'm using a Red Hat based distro) file for Opera and then install it locally.

Opera offers a *.tar.gz download. When you decompress it, the resulting directory includes a script, install.sh. Running the script as root installs the program.

Another option is to download the sources and compile them locally. This link will tell you more about that. I started with Slackware, which does not have an official repository and a lot of the software I installed the first time around was via this method.

I would recommend that anyone who wants to understand Linux, as opposed to just use it, do at least one compile and fight with any dependency issues directly; it's a good way to learn.

thanks all for your help, i'm going to mark this thread as resolved because this will take me a while to sort out as i need to learn some stuff first. not giving up on linux though : )

Just thought i'd give an update. It turns out the wireless wasn't connecting because last time my laptop was opened and tinkered with the bios was reset so wireless was set to off.