I installed Slackware 14.1 on a Dell Inspiron i3646. Everything works except for the built in wifi. ifconfig shows the built in wired network card (and the loopback network of course) but reports no Wireless card. Network manager from within KDE also has trouble finding the wireless card. Problem is I am also uncertain as to who makes the chipset behind the wifi card and no amount of googling has led me to a clear answer.

Any suggestions or solutions?

Thanks.

lspci should be able to provide some insight on the wireless card. From there, it might require additional firmware to be able to work properly. If you can't figure it out from the output, paste it here and we'll see what we can do to help you get this working

Thanks. Looks like it is an Atheros AR9565 chipset. Here is the relevant lspci output:

Any suggestions? I am currently googling for this chipset on Slackware (as well as other distros, for inspiration).

This might help: http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/ath9k

As frankbell points out, your device should be supported by the ath9k kernel module.
Is the driver being loaded? Check with '/sbin/lspci -k | grep "02:00.0" -A 3'

If not, do the product and vendor IDs of your device ( found in the output of '/sbin/lspci -kn | grep "02:00.0" ' ) appear in the output of '/sbin/modinfo ath9k' ?
i.e. Any output from this command?
/sbin/modinfo ath9k | grep -i $(/sbin/lspci -kn | grep "02:00.0" | cut -d " " -f3 | sed 's/:/.*/')

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Looks like yes the kernel module for the network controller (ath9k) is in fact being loaded (based on the output from "/sbin/lspci -k | grep "02:00.0" -A 3").

Good! I was concerned that your device may not have been recognized by the kernel. Slackware 14.1 has the 3.10.17 kernel and support for your device appeared in the 3.10 series.
How are you trying to configure networking?
If you are using NetworkManager then you will need the NetworkManager daemon running. Is /etc/rc.d/rc.networkmanager an executable script? If using NetworkManager, then a clean /etc/rc.d/rc.inet1.conf should be used. http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...9/#post5236776
If you are using the traditional network configuration, perhaps this will help. http://docs.slackware.com/slackware:...e_your_network

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Thanks! That did it. Starting the network manager daemon on bootup by making it's script executable did the trick. I know Patrick is pretty old school, which is one of the reasons I am attracted to Slackware in the first place, but he really should consider starting a wifi networking daemon by default. People running Slackware as a server can then turn it off rather than the reverse. Most users nowadays, myself included, expect their computers and laptops, including wifi, to work out of the box. Is there a wifi configuration daemon that starts by default on Slackware as of 14.1?

I am replying with this message from that Dell PC (actually a laptop motherboard that Dell shoves into a cheap desktop enclosure). BTW how do you get LinuxQuestions to recognize that I am using Slackware, it still shows a generic Linux icon in my case.

Thanks again!

It is an installer option, you may have just missed it.

See this thread... there's a couple of different options, but the best is to probably get a User-agent switcher extension for your browser where you can change it for only certain sites (to prevent breakage for sites that don't recognize Slackware).

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...go-4175499401/