I am fairly new to linux and I just bought a new computer. I have a dell inspiron N4010 and I installed Ubuntu 10.04 on it. I then was unable to connect with a wired connection or wireless. I am sure this is a driver issue I just don't know how to get the proper drivers. If I put my mouse over the wireless icon it says networking disabled. But the switch to enable networking is on the keyboard.
Let me know if you need any more information

I am not sure I can help, but I may reduce the confusion a little.
The "networking disabled" means in Linux, the switch on the keyboard is in hardware: they do not know about each other.
If the switch was ON when Linux was loaded, it should have prompted you for network settings (for the wired, at least). If the switch was OFF, it may not have been able to detect that you HAD any network interface, and bypassed that setup. (On some Laptops that switch only turns off the wireless NIC radio, in which case wired should have been detected.)

Did you configure some network settings during installation?
If not, you may need to rerun the setup, firstboot, or System_config_network process and enter your network information.

Can you tell, first of all, if an Ethernet NIC is being detected? what does 'ipconfig -a' report?

You will need to find out what your network hardware is. Open a terminal and type 'lspci' and ENTER.

See these posts for info I found on how to get the drivers. It sounds like this machine has new hardware and the drivers are not automatically available. I see two different wireless chips mentioned; so be sure you know what you have with lspci before you try to install.

I do not have this hardware, but found these searching http://google.com/linux; so I may not be able to help you further. Hope this does help some.

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ighlight=n4010
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ighlight=n4010
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...ighlight=n4010

I see that http://ubuntuforums.org has a section for Dell which might be a good place to get help. That's where these threads were.

As a newcomer, something I found very enlightening was how little the name on the box matters, and how much the chipset does (the actual electronic components 'under the hood').

I was amazed at first how often the same manufacturer changed the chips they used, but didn't change the box at all.

lspci and lsusb are your friends as mentioned above - they look under the hood and ignore the shiny packaging ;-)

Regards,

Andy T

Wow. I am amazed at all these quality responses. Thanks!
I did install Ubuntu on this computer a few months ago. I installed it, then ran into this problem, and then decided to wait until after school before doing anything about this. So I don't really remember configuring any network settings. I don't think I did.
Also I ran ipconfig -a in terminal and it outputted 'ipconfig: command not found'
----
lspci outputted that my Network Controller: Intel Corporation WiMAX/WiFi Link 6050 Series (rev 57)
and Ethernet Controller: Atheros Communications AR8152 v1.1 Fast Ethernet (rev c1)

And thanks for those links. I did check out some other places before posting here and I did that same command series mentioned in your first given link.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install build-essential
cd ~/Desktop
tar -xjvf compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless*
scripts/driver-select atl1c
make
sudo make install

This didn't work for me because the update would fail because i wasn't connected to the internet.
So I downloaded the tar file they linked and started inputted

tar -xjvf compat-wireless-2.6.tar.bz2
cd compat-wireless-2010-12-26
scripts/driver-select atl1c
make
sudo make install

I rebooted and it still didnt work so i followed the 'sudo modprobe atl1c' command. Still didn't work.
http://www.downloadatoz.com/driver/a...ntu-10-10.html
-these were the steps i was following

In order to build that driver you need build-essentials. You can get this from the install cd according to this: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=381532 It tells you what you need to do to install it from there. Then repeat what you did with the downloaded tarball of the driver.