I have previously installed Linux Mint on a fairly recent laptop, and have made my wireless internet connection without problem. Straightaway a list of available connections have come up, including my own, and I have just clicked on it (with password) to connect.
I have now installed Mint on a much older laptop, running XP at the moment. It connects wirelessly to the internet without problem on XP, but I am not getting any connections shown in Mint. All I get is a box about VPN Network connections, which I'm afraid mean nothing to me. Can anyone help - I thought I was fairly "with-it" regarding my computing, but this is a brick-wall to me?

if your computer don't show available networks ssids than probably the driver is not installed. You should try istalling it with ndiswrapper.

4 ways to get wireless working on linux

There are three ways to get wireless. One is to use built in drivers, two is to add in drivers and three is to use windows drivers on ndiswrapper. A maybe forth deal is some driver conflict exists now and you'd have to black list the faulty one.


Knowing the chip in xp or linux helps to start. xp will show the exact model and usually linux will. Knowing how it connects to the motherboard helps also. Some might use a pci to pci bridge, some connect to the pci and others may be usb or pcmcia connected. We may need to know that.

Some links to start you off. Mint is ubuntu.


https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...gGuide/Drivers

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...otingProcedure

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi...eShootingGuide

Thanks for your replies fellas, but I think I will have to give up. My 84 year-old brain can't take all this in. I have looked at "Speccy" and see that the laptop has a Realtek RTL 8723AE. I Googled it and what came up frightened me to death! I haven't tried a cable connection (Ethernet), which I suppose would work, but the distance is not at all convenient. Should have stuck with pen and ink!

You need the Realtec driver. You could connect up with a cable just long enough to fix this. If there is a Linux user group in your area, I'm sure they would be happy to help you. Try searching for "Linux user group [city name]."

http://askubuntu.com/questions/13963...not-recognized