Why dont I have Wifi?
Hello all,
I have been interested in Linux for quite some time now but I have been running into issues that I can not solve, even a guy I go to school with can not solve. He is no master but with 10 years of Linux under his belt he is pretty familiar with the basics. Issue one. To get started I wanted a bootable USB that I could boot on my Early 2011 Mac Book Pro, I understand that this is not a good way to operate but I wanted it just to play around in Linux and see what it was like. Using the app "Mac Linux USB Loader" I created a USB with Linux Mint 17.2. Worked fine but I did not have any Wireless internet. I could use ethernet but no wireless. Buddy googled the issue found the driver I needed and we tried installing it but still nothing. I gave up and lost interest. My mac is getting old and its starting to have issues, being in college I cant afford to go a day without my laptop. I am scared that it may just up and quit one day. Im home for winter break and found my old Dell Laptop. This laptop is nothing special and does not have much computing power. It is running XP which im sure everyone knows is outdated. I am hoping to partition its hard drive and get a working version of Linux on it so that I have a backup. This brings me into issue 2. Using an app from the internet I tried creating a Windows USB with Linux Mint 17.3 that I could boot from my windows PC. Got it working but here we are again, no wireless. Am I doing something wrong or do I need to do something else? Any and all help is appreciated. |
The old Dell likely has Broadcom WiFi which can be a PITA to get working. Download MX-15, 32 bit, as it has great WiFi support built in - especially Broadcom...
http://www.mepiscommunity.org/mx Mint is everybody's darling but it is not great with older hardware... |
PUPPY try it on that OLD PC
linux puppy 6.0 is very lightweight 300mb install size and made SPECIFICALLY for real old computers. download the live dvd put it on thumbdrive and see if u can get the wireless up and running with puppy!
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Welcome to the forum :) I don't think it's anything you're doing wrong, most likely it's missing the appropriate driver and/or firmware. We'll need more information on your adapter's chip before we can give you more detailed answer. Please open a terminal and post the entire output for (no screenshots, please)... Code:
lspci -nnk | grep -i net -A2 |
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Thanks guys I will run the terminal command this evening and reply with what it says.
Where is the best place to download puppy? |
Download Puppy Linux from their site at the link below.
http://puppylinux.org/main/Download%...%20Release.htm |
Update, Created a USB with Slacko Puppy 32 bit. Was able to get the wireless up and running with hardly no issues.
Tried running that command, could not get the Slacko Terminal to return anything. Not sure if I typed it wrong or if this one uses its own language? What exactly is the difference between 32 and 64 bit? |
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I had success with my wifi following the links in this thread
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...fi-4175561793/ I don't recall which command I used, but I think it was this one /etc/rc.d/rc.intel |
Ahh ok. I will have to double check this laptop but I am pretty sure it has "AMD 64 technology"
I've been looking around slacko puppy. Before I fully install it to the laptop I want to check out a few others. Any other reccomendations for a light version? Will be checking out the mx15 next. Somewhere someone mentioned lbuntu? |
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Not a lot of features, but excellent for, email, web browsing, online shopping etc. In my opinion a better choice than Linux Puppy |
Really all I need is Web, email, word processing, and then the ability to to entertain myself on a rainy day so piano bar and youtube.
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and it's free. |
Sorry for late reply, holidays got busy.
Created Lubuntu USB. Can not get wireless connections can't figure out how to make it work with this computers wireless card. |
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This command results 5:00.0 Network Controller [0280] Broadcom Corp BCM4311 802.11 b/g wlan [14e4:4311] Subsystem Dell wireless 1390 WLAN Mini Card [1028:0007] Kernan Driver in use b43-pci-bridge |
Hi...
Thank you for providing then output. :) Broadcom adapters can require more effort to get working in Linux than others. First, you will need to connect your system to the internet using an ethernet cable to your router or modem, if you have a cable and ethernet port. Borrowing some instructions from Luis Alvarado and KiLLeRfriend on the askubuntu site, please open a terminal and run the following commands in order, one at a time... Code:
sudo apt-get update Code:
sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source Code:
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer b43-fwcutter Code:
cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | egrep 'bcm' "(You may want to copy this) and see if the term 'blacklist bcm43xx' is there. If it is, type cd /etc/modprobe.d/ and then sudo gedit blacklist.conf Put a # in front of the line: blacklist bcm43xx Then save the file (I was getting error messages in the terminal about not being able to save, but it actually did save properly). Reboot" (Italics added by me.) Please note: Before you start this entire process, you will need to install "gedit" from the repositories. The most simple way to do this is to open the Synaptic package manager and install it from there. :) Let us know how it goes... Regards... |
Thanks Will get on it!
Before I do much though I want to double check, should I install Lubuntu on the PC before doing all of this? Or should I verify this all on my flashdrive? I dont think I created a flash drive with persistence so I will loose any progress, just wanted to verify that it was OK to install before I know its operational. |
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You might have much better results if you install Lubuntu onto your system but you're welcome to try it live. :) Regards... |
Never mind I restarted it and gedit seems to be working. Will report back
Final edit, Wifi works great. Thanks for the help! Wasnt as bad as I was expecting. |
flyfisher117,
Did you get round to trying MX-15? I can highly recommend it, based on my experience with my Samsung N220 netbook. |
The review you posted was for antiX which is different from MX-15. While the two distros share a lot, including developers, they are quite different. AntiX is specialized towards older hardware and is very lightweight where MX-15 is a more mainstream, full featured distro...
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NGIB,
Thanks for that. I have amended my post. |
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Regards... |
(Whoops, nevermind.)
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I have not quite yet, I just wanted to get a basic solid OS on the computer just as backup. Now that I have that I can explore some more distros. |
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