My Experience With Ubuntu 7.04 Wireless

So it seems everyone is getting extremely excited over this new Ubuntu wireless madness with restricted drivers being a part of the official repositories. However, I just had to check it out for myself. I, like most people, have had a bitchin' time trying to get my wireless to work with any sort of linux, but now it seems as if the days of hacking together a half-ass solution are over.

The card that I am using is a Dell 1450 802.11 a/b/g Broadcom 43xx card (BCM4309 to be specific), and the laptop that I am using this on is a Dell Inspiron 9300. For me, the wireless card worked right out of the box, but this will not be the case for everyone. A lot of you are going to have to enable the restricted repository, which you should be notified as soon as Ubuntu recognizes your hardware during the initial boot up. It took me a second to get used to the new interface for managing the wireless cards, but once I spent a few minutes with it, its very easy to use.

First off, this is probably my favorite part about this whole article. The WiFi ssid list actually looks great, and functions way better than I had expected.


Next, once you click whichever wireless network you want to connect to it will ask you for your password to log onto the network.



The network settings window looks very similar to the one in 6.10. You may have to check the box next to wireless, because I think it is disabled by default. To get to this window click System -> Administration -> Network, and then type in your admin password.



THATS IT! Your wireless should now be working as long as you have a wireless card that does not require restricted drivers. If your card does require restricted drivers, Ubuntu will notify you, and then prompt you to choose whether or not you would like to turn on the Restricted Drivers repository or not. Here is a picture of where you can find the Restricted Driver manager.



I hope you have enjoyed my guide, and that it was somewhat helpful. Leave me a comment if you have any questions or things you would like to change or add to my post. Peace.