Hi all,
Never used any other system other than Windows. First time ever tried Linux, so please be patient with me, installed two days ago on very old HP pavilion DV5000, installed Linux Mint I think its called, after making a flash usb drive.
( Of which I found painstakingly hard, because of having to save it, then find it and use other software like Etcher, which i could not work out, then using Rufus to make an iso that could boot, )
Anyway finally installed it, also removed the old windows 7, at the same time, so after that Linux was unable to find the wireless card in the laptop, of which a physical blue light displays on the laptop with a button below to turn off or on, so my first thoughts were that a connection internally had come off, so after a few hours of searching on the internet, then taking apart the laptop, not finding anything wrong with it.

I came across this site, and by chance read about another user called
Dolphans1 who was experiencing similar if not exactly the same problem.
As I read on another user called RockDoctor who proceeded to help Dophans1, as i said earlier a novice with this system, when apparently anyone advise the word "CODE" that refers to the black window at the bottom, which i thought was always called command line or dos in old days.
so as you can imagine i was looking all over the place for code.
eventually clicked on black window and entered ( sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer ) which RockDoctor had written, then after reboot it all came back on, the Blue light, the WiFi all working great.

So I would like to say to both Dolphans1 and RockDoctor a big Thank You, and should I need or can be of any assistance myself (doubtful) in the future thsi site shall be my first port of call.

Welcome to freedom for you & your computer.

There are many people on these forums who gladly help people like yourself start the learning journey of using another Operating System, other than the one that comes with most computers, & I hope you will, in time, also help out a newbie with their questions too.

At the end of the helpful post, there is a question: followed by the word "yes", which is clickable.

In addition to adding a post to the thread to thank them, just clicking yes, indicates to them that you found them helpful.

1 members found this post helpful.

Some folk also use the reputation systems as a side-channel for communication. Click on the reputation icon (in the side panel on the left, beside the penguins) and you get a chance to attach a short comment. I often use that to say "thank you". It's a little more social than just hitting the "was-helpful" link — which I sometimes feel is a little too impersonal.

2 members found this post helpful.

Thank you GazL: I always wondered how some people were changing that message, and was going to try it on your post, but I was too quick on the trigger with the old habbit... next time

1 members found this post helpful.

No worries.

Speaking of which... might be good to make a reputation icon click also increase the "was helpful" count.

1 members found this post helpful.

LOL, I tried, mainly for training myself how to leave a comment in the reputation field, on your above post, and it told me I needed to "spread some reputation around, before giving it to GazL again". I understand such reasoning, but was the first I've encountered it.

1 members found this post helpful.

thanks all you guys for the welcome messages, not to sure what some of the lingo is that all you clever people say in reply's or comments, just rang and asked my daughter what LOL meant so at nearly 70 still lots to cram in my little brain LOL, anyways will be posting very soon with my own new problem, think I have took on more than i can chew with an Apple imac 2008 model, speak to all you guys soon please all stay safe and take care.

Yeah, I've hit that one before. It's annoying, but I suppose it's necessary to prevent abuse of the system.