If you want, you can get a perfectly well working wireless adapter for about 20€ which is not much - it's an USB wireless adapter by A-Link (see
this page). There are other devices that use the very same chipset and thus should work in most distributions of Linux by just plugging the device in, without needing to install extra drivers. You may get one for less too.
If you do want to stick with your current hardware, which is ok by me (I don't encourage buying things if you don't absolutely need to), you need to know something about drivers. A driver in Linux is a kernel module - a piece of code built into the kernel or (more often) as a separate module that is loaded into the kernel either during boot process or when it's needed (there are systems nowadays that find out when you plug hardware in and need to have the module(s) loaded). Ndiswrapper is no different; it's a kernel module (and some tools to work with it) that is used to "wrap" a Windows driver so that your hardware works in Linux. Two kernel modules loaded at the same time for the same device may cause trouble, so to make sure you don't run into problems, make sure you have only one kernel module loaded for your wireless device (ndiswrapper and a native driver loaded at the same time usually causes the device not to work as expected). If you use ndiswrapper, remove the other module completely or (preferrably) just blacklist it so it doesn't get loaded. If you use "native" module, do not load ndiswrapper.
If your hardware doesn't work "out of the box", first find out what chip it uses. Then find out what driver (kernel module) you are supposed to use with that chip. Then make sure it is loaded when your hardware is plugged in. And if all this happens, then make sure your configuration is correct, and when that's fine, consider trying out another piece of software to test the functionality
Ubuntu's NetworkManager applet (the one you used) is great, easy to use and all that, but if you want to simply see if your card works, you can do so in command line.
See if there are networks around:
Code:
sudo iwlist wlan0 scan
Use eth1 instead of wlan0 if you need; the wireless device name may be either ethN or wlanN, where N is a number from zero upwards, depending on how many devices you have (eth0 is typically primary wired ethernet card device). If you get results from that command, the hardware works and your problem is either in configuration of NetworkManager, the encryption type used or the way you input your passphrase. If you don't get results from this, it indicates that your current driver is not functioning properly or you don't have the correct driver.
To connect to an unencrypted or WEP-encrypted wireless network you can use 'iwconfig' command; see
for details. It's easy to use, but remember to use the ASCII switch if your passphrase is in ASCII and not hex..if iwlist provided visible networks information, set your wireless access point for WEP encryption for five minutes and try connecting with iwconfig. If it works, move on to harder encryption, if not, turn on harder encryption anyway (so your neighbours don't break in) and start thinking what might be wrong with your settings.
You can use wpa_supplicant to connect to WEP-, WPA-, non-encrypted, wireless and (if I'm not mistaken) even wired networks - it's a handy tool for command line. Some say it's difficult to set up, but I disagree (after you make it the first time
). Just use wpa_passphrase to create a basic network entry, copy it to /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf, fill the configuration file by some example file found on the net (you only need a few lines, not all of them! try to find as short an example file as possible, with comments if you like) and run wpa_supplicant and then dhcp client. Probably if your hardware works, though, you're better off with NetworkManager (the app in your desktop's panel) I guess..
