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Re: [LUG] Mint 9 and wifi

 

On 27/10/10 17:25, Neil Winchurst wrote:
I had Mint 7 Xfce on my laptop until recently. The connections to the
internet via wired and wifi just worked. I was well impressed.

Recently I installed Mint 9 (a fresh install, not an upgrade). That
works well except for the wifi connection. I cannot get it to work at all.

Are there any wifi experts on the list? Checking for cards I have
Realtex RTL 8139 and Broadcom BCM 4318 listed, if that means anything to
anyone.

I can use ethernet fine. I know that the wifi on my router (Netgear
DG834G) is working as my wife is using it for her laptop.

Via Google I see that wifi worked OK in Mint 7 and Mint 8 but there seem
to be problems with Mint 9.

Can anyone point me in the right direction please?

Thanks

Neil


I have a feeling that the Broadcom BCM 4318 is your wifi card and may need a firmware or proprietary driver. I'm in the process of fixing a laptop for a friend which also has a Broadcom wifi card (not sure if it's the same one mind) and when booting in Ubuntu 10.04 it comes up with a message saying that something is required, I think it may be a restricted driver.

This forum post covers this particular card on Ubuntu 10.04 (which I believe Mint 9 is based on):

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1507981

Doing a search on Ubuntu 10.10 I find that there is a package firmware-b43-installer in the repositories which is an installer package for the firmware for this wifi card although on the forum post someone suggests installing b43-fwcutter.

Of course to download these packages you'll need to plug your machine into a wired network connection (the Realtek 8139 wired ethernet should be supported out of the box).

Hope this helps.

Rob

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