Heya, i'm completely new to Linux but want to give it a go as it seems like a nice step forward and i like the look and feel of the OS.

So here's my problem: i've burnt a disc with the latest Ubuntu (1.10 i think?) and want to make sure everything will work before i take the plunge and install. I want to set up a connection but am not sure how (i'm sorry if this is all basic trivial but i've no idea what i'm doing) and have a HP Pavilion DV50000 series laptop with integrated WLAN. I've read on here about drivers being ported to Linux for external cards, is this the same thing for integrated WLAN?

and also how would i go about setting it all up.

Thankyou

Hi There

To be totally honest, your best bet is to install and then see what happens! I presume you are running windows so set up your laptop to dual boot Ubuntu and Windows. This is how most of us get started. Make sure you clean up your Windows installation first - removing all the junk such as temporary internet files, and then defragmenting the hard drive.

Once it is up and running, you can see what works and what doesn't. Many Distros work perfectly straight 'out of the box'. if you have problems, you can then post specific enquiries on this forum. Incidentally, there is no better place on the net than here for getting helpful advice and answers - this forum has helped me so much in the past.

cheers for the reply - yer i thought that would be my best bet too and ended up installing it; dual boot is working fine and I am on Windows at the moment as I can't get internet on Ubuntu yet...

I'm not too sure how to set it up, i click the little icon and popped up with a network name saying "lo" that was idle. Is there anyway to search for networks like in Windows?

Thankyou

While booted from a live CD such as Knoppix or Ubuntu desktop, open a terminal window and run the command: lspci -v

That will spit out details about the card (and everything else on the PCI bus) which will let you know how challenging or not your install will be. Almost all internal wireless cards are either Broadcom or Intel. Either should be no problem.