I have just installed Ubuntu 9.10 on my Dell Inspiron 1520. I have a wireless connection in my house, but the laptop cannot connect to it. I've tried using connect to hidden network and it still does not work. How do enable, detect or get my system to use my wireless card on this type of laptop?

That will depend on how your wireless is set up (WEP, WPA, WPA2?), and which chipset
you have in that laptop.

lspci | grep -i net


But since you're using Ubuntu and I'm almost certain they have their special way
of doing things I'm moving this thread to the Ubuntu forum.


Cheers,
Tink

At first U will need a wired connection to Ur router.
U have to access UR router via 192.168.1.1 in your browser.
Depending on model of UR router in wireless interface settings have to set UR wireless network discoverable.
Find something like : authentication method and set it to open system
Make sure to uncheck hide ssid

In this way UR wifi network will be visible to UR laptop.
also have to set the the number of IP addresses in DHCP settings.Make sure to set the number according to devices connected to it.

I hope it helped

Hello all. I was searching up and down for a solution to how to get my Dell Inspiron 1520 laptop to access the wireless card with Ubuntu 9.10. After gathering a lot of responses from a well informed community, everything i tried did not resolve my issue. Then someone said to install the proprietary drivers. How??

Go to System. Select Administration, then select Hardware Drivers.

When I did this, the system found two drivers for my wireless network card. Having read about 100 posts, I knew my driver was the STA Broadcom 43XX. I plugged in my wired connection, chose activate for the driver and BOOM!!!! I'm wireless.

Please understand. I am a novice. No wait, I am a major beginner, novice, gotta be born before you can crawl type of linux user. Go for the simplest solution first. I won't be offended.