If your card already has support built into the ubuntu kernel your card should be recognised at the installation stage. If not, don't worry, you can still get wireless working if you're offline, but how you do this depends on your card. Once you've installed the system go to the sourceforge ndiswrapper website to see if your card's listed and how to get the .inf and .sys windows drivers. You might be lucky and find that linux drivers are available, but if not you'll have to use ndiswrapper. You can install ndiswrapper from your installation cd, but I've never managed to get this to work. Better to download the source file for version 1.2 from
http://sourceforge.net/project/showf...roup_id=93482. You will obviously need to go online for this, but just download the file from a pc that is online. Once you have this use the synaptic package manager to install essential packages from the CD by typing the following into a shell:
sudo apt-get install debhelper build-essential fakeroot linux-headers-$(uname -r)
Then untar the file and install it:
cd /home/username/
sudo tar xvzf ndiswrapper-1.2.tar.gz
cd /home/username/ndiswrapper-1.2.tar.gz
sudo make
sudo make install
You then need to cd to the directory where you've store the windows drivers for your card and type:
sudo ndiswrapper -i <insert name of .inf file>
Then type the following to make sure the driver's installed:
ndiswrapper -l
Hopefully this will show the driver installed. From here you need to type:
sudo modprobe nidswrapper
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan - if you're cards not listed as wlan0 just change this accordingly.
If you can see your network type: ndiswrapper -m followed by sudo gedit /etc/modules. Add ndiswrapper to the end of this file.
From here you should be able to set your essid and encryption from the system/administration/network interface in the gui. Just click on your wlan card and then select properties. When you've finished press activate. You should now be online.
If you have problems with ndiswrapper try different versions. However, if there's linux driver available use that. Hope this helps and that I'm not teaching you something you already know. I've managed to get three Ubuntu boxes working with this method - all used belkin cards with broadcom chipsets.
