Hi!
I am trying to install Ubuntu 8.04 on my nephew's Dell Inspiron 1526 laptop (running Windows Vista) which was totally brought down by a mileu of choicesest virus and trojans. I formatted his hard-drive and reinstalled Vista and Ubuntu 8.04 on it, suggesting that he use only Ubuntu for net-surfing. Ubuntu installation went on perfectly. Now everything works fine on it except I am unable to set up wireless internet on it.
lspci reveals that the wireless card is broadcom BCM4310.
I installed ndiswrapper and copied bcmwl5.inf and bcmwl5.sys from my Windows xP system on his /home/user directory. Then -
$sudo ndiswrapper -i /path/to/bcmwl5.inf
after which
$sudo ndiswrapper -l
gives the following output -
bcmwl5 : driver installed
the device line was missing, so I did
$sudo lspci -n
which revelead the device id as 14e4:xxxx
then I did -
$sudo ndiswrapper -a 14e4:xxxx bcmwl5
after which -
$sudo ndiswrapper -l
revealed the driver as well as device. After which, I did -
$sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
$sudo iwconfig
which should have displayed wlan0, but it was not so. wlan0 was not being shown. Only l0 and eth0 were displayed.
Hence I am unable to set up wireless net on this laptop. If anyone has set up wireless net on a Dell Inspiron 1526 laptop, I'll be grateful if he shares his knowledge with me.
Eagerly awaiting your response, so that I can convert my nephew to Linux!
Thanking in advance,

please read this it works better with a linux driver and trust me after you apt-get the first driver ubuntu will down load the correct firmware and install it. I know did three machines this week.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Wi.../bcm43xx/Hardy
open this look to the right you will be using the b43 legacy or up read this and ubuntu will load it all for you. but after it is load do not get impatient wait till everything is done and reboot. the drive is in the kernel you just need the firmware to run the chip and the firware cutter to extract the firmware.and ubuntu can not distribute it but you can get it and install it from there repository. it has to do with the licenses.
a better link http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

Thanks for the prompt reply,
Did you, by any chance, install it on a Dell Inspiron 1526 system?

I installed 8.10 on my 1420n and everything works. My 1420 has the Intel WiFi card which is well supported in Linux. Broadcom WiFi will work but it requires special handling to get it installed -- see above. You may also find http://linux.dell.com/wiki/index.php/Ubuntu_8.04 helpful.