Hi,

I know that there are a lot of other forums about this topic and I have read a lot of them, but as I am not an expert, I don't know how to solve my problem.
I have Acer Travelmate 2490 notebook. I wanted to upgrade from kubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 but something went wrong and finally I had to delete 11.04 and install 11.10 as a new system. Previously I had some help with the upgrades and every problem was solved, but now I did it on my own, and I don't remember to the solutions. My biggest problem is that my wifi doesn't work. When I click on knetwork manager I see WLAN unavaible (it's enabled) and if I click on it I see this:


Type:
Wireless 802.11
Connection State:
Unavailable
IP Address:
No IP address.
Connection Speed:
Unknown
System Name:
wlan0
MAC Address:
00:16:CF:70:CE:26
Driver:
b43


Based on the things I read in other forums I could find out the type of my wifi card with this command: "~$ lspci -vvnn | grep 14e4" and I got this:
"06:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX [14e4:170c] (rev 02)
06:02.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4318] (rev 02)"

I would really appreciate if someone could help me. Please write exactly what should I do like you would explain something to an idiot

Thanks!

The Broadcom drivers are available and in the restricted packages repos, which are not enabled by default.

I haven't used Kubuntu, so I can't point you directly to the exact location, but in Synaptic or its Kubuntu equivalent, find the list of repositories and enable the "restricted drivers" one.

You could also look around the control panel area for something that says "additional" or "proprietary" or "restricted" drivers or some such wording.

Thank you for your answer.
I guess one problem was that I searched for drivers to "Broadcom Corporation BCM4401" instead of "Broadcom Corporation BCM4318". I found some advices here and I downloaded b43-fwcutter and firmware-b43-installer, but I don't know how to use them. I didn't find how to activate additional drivers in system settings, I just don't see anything which refers to additional drivers.

I don't use kubuntu (I run Ubuntu) but there is in the settings a utility called "restricted drivers" or "additional drivers". You can use that to install what you need.

Thanks for all the answers. I still didn't find in system settings what you wrote, but I followed the instructions here and it worked!!