I have an Acer Aspire 3680-2682 and have used Fedora 8 in the past on another system. I found that I had trouble getting Fedora to run with the Atheros AR5007EG that is in this computer and at the time it was said that the driver for it only works with Vista. I would like to run Linux again and was wondering if there is a distro that works with this card out of the box, better yet if one works well enough that I could do a net install? Thanks for your help!

I believe you need the ath5k kernel driver. The kernel needs to be >= 2.6.27 from the messages I've read on the mailing list. If the kernel on the install boot disk is 2.6.27, then a net install might work.

I don't have a specific distribution in mind, do any of them come with that driver on the install disk? Just trying to find a good distro that will work with the hardware I have out of the box, so to speak.

More likely than not, any distribution with the kernel 2.6.27 or newer will have ath5k as a module.
However, you must consider that to find out which kernel is using each distribution will take you
may be 1/2 an hour. Building up the driver will take less than that. Whatever your kernel an distribution, download the kernel source, downlad madwifi driver from repository, tar -x, make, make install and be happy!

i have the same wificard and finally after quite some time I found help.
ubuntu has worked by running some package updates in the terminal, and in the beta version of intrepid it worked flawlessly, but the finall release no luck.

currently i'm using mandriva 2009 and though the on off switch is inoperable but the card works great and gets better connections than in (windblows) getting acustom to the different package manager and finding codecs got some getting used to.

sorry, here is the ubuntu code:

they require an active internet connection, so walk your computer over to the router and hook up the ethernet. Open a terminal and do these commands, each in order and in turn.
Code:

sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-generic
wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/madwifi...current.tar.gz
tar zxvf madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-current.tar.gz
cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6-r3835-20080801/

The file name will change as the current build changes. Just watch what the file is that is extracted.
Code:

make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe ath_pci
sudo reboot

Thanks, I will give that a try. Besides Gnome and KDE, are there any other major differences between Ubuntu and Kubuntu?

Besides unloading and building ath_pci and related modules, in most Acer's laptops the wifi has to be turned on using the bios. You will need acer_acpi, in [k|x]ubuntu it is budled in the package. I believe it
has been included in the kernel now (after version 2.6.26.x), once running,
echo 1 > /proc/acpi/acer/wireless

[grrrr] tabs are tabs, no control keys as most boards believe... an idiotic thing that comes from Windows.
so echo 1 > to turn wifi on and echo 0 to said file to turn it off and save energy.
The switch in the front of the laptop will not work until you install a redirect using hotkeys or some other program.

I now have Kubuntu up and running using wubi. I'm not sure what steps I need to take, but I do have the cable plugged in to the router so that I can make the changes and get the wireless nic working. I'm fairly new so simplicity would be great! Thanks!

OK, I do not have ubuntu, rather an old debian, but does not matter too much, all linux are the same except for a layer of software intended to make life easier (removing much of the freedon Linux gave you. It is always the same, freedon and necessity oppose each other, every distribution for the needy (dumb?) tastes to Windows sooner or later)

Step one. See what you have out of the box.
dmesg |less
check kernel number and remember it.
check if ath5k is running. If possitive, did it recognized your card?
check if acer_acpi is running

double check,
lsmod |grep ath
lsmod |grep acer
ls -l /proc/acpi/acer

Case
ath5k is not running) check if it is in distribution
aptitude search [madwifi | ath5k]
if [in distribution] install package
else do as indicated by windozehater above in thread

do not forget you need the source code of the kernel installed, so you
need to run before the last step something like
apt-get source your-kernel-package
(see man page for apt-get option source to see how to)
get it and unpack (tar -xvjf file.bz2 or tar -xvzf file.gz) at directory
/usr/src
now the windozehater thing

Do you have wifi now? at least, can you see the networks? check the
tail of dmesg to see ath_pci loaded fine.

If you still have nothing. Do you need acer_acpi? check laptop's manual, can the
wifi be turned on/off by a switch in the laptop? if yes, you need
acer_acpi, if wifi is always on, then you do not need it.

if you have installed acer_acpi or you do not need it, and still you have no network.
iwconfig
do you have the wifi devices wifi and wlan0 or ath0 ?
if wiconfig is not present! dumb ubuntu: aptitude install wireless-tools
and repeat the iwconfig
if devices are present, try
iwlist wlan0|ath0 scanning
"A|B" means use A or B (just in case you are not familiar with bash notation)
checking for networks available, do no check wifi device, it cannot be
scanned.

If wireless-tools do not work, we are runing into trouble. Report.
If they work, then turn your guns to the manager.
aptitude remove network-manager
aptitude install wicd
you can also try wifi-radar and other I do not remember. wicd and networkmanager work on my Acer

if nothing works, you can still connect using directly the tools
iwconfig wlan0 "essid"
dhclient3 essid
replace "essid" by your network name.

Nothing works? post it, somebody have probably step on the problem before or has been close enough, and knows what to try next.
-------------

Some people believe Linux is free because you do not pay for it. Linux has a cost: knowledge and uderstanding
Linux is free because allows you to do what you want the way you want, free as in Freedom!

Distributions will help you, but will also ate your freedom , some are voracious others are nicer.

with linux sonce kernel 0.99 (linux was my second unix on a PC)

I have installed madwifi with ath_pci per the instructions windozhater listed. Now it lists an ath0 as well as eth0 (for wired I assume). Unfortunately I still cannot get ath0 to turn on, I tried following the instructions by hgsolari, but I'm not sure how to install, acer_acpi and the /proc/acpi/acer/wireless directory doesn't exist so I'm assuming I need that. I have /proc/acpi, but no acer directory. Getting closer, but I need the final touches if someone could help... Maybe it was listed and I missed it, but I would appreciate any help. Let me know if you need me to copy any information from my computer. Thanks!

Looks like aceracpi (former acer_acpi) is bundled with ubuntu hardy
there is a backport, see

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/190677

you have to figure out which ubuntu package you need to install, wubi probably has a search method, oterwise use "apt-get search acer" and
replace acer everytime you fail until you find it. It may be called acer-wmi or any other thing.
You may want ask to a ubuntu specific forum, this is a distribution matter.

Aceracpi page is at:
http://code.google.com/p/aceracpi/
with notes and instructions. If you download the source code from git, you have an old howto for building it.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=224350
skip the wget since you have downloaded a newer version, current version appears to be 0.11.2 released 2008-03-12 (stable)

you are closer, hopefully one step away.

good luck

If you are not administrator, ignore this post. As the server told me I could'nt post not being logged-in, I resend the previous
post. But the server lied, and the post was duplicated. And there is no
delete-post visible, you get all this ranting

I did find acer-wmi in my distro and have tried to google how to get it up and running but I'm coming up short. Are there instructions anywhere on what I need to do to activate things here?

There is a switch on the front of my laptop, but I think I've seen in several places that it will never light up under any Linux distribution.

Not sure what step to take next as I can't figure out how to use acer-wmi.

Thanks again!