Thursday, July 22, 2010

Wifi with the Dell e1505

So there I was, running a fresh install of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala on a nice little Dell laptop when I realized something. The wifi (BCM4311 chip) was not being found. First I checked the network settings, and tried to add a network manually and looked for toggles for the wifi as I saw the light was not on and the Bluetooth was. A quick google search lead me indirectly to This Site which stated the files needed to get it all working dandy. Strangely, the files he mentioned didn't exist on the hard drive install, so I ventured over to Synaptic, and lo, there were the three files.

  1. /pool/main/p/patch/patch_2.5.9-5_i386.deb
  2. /pool/main/d/dkms/dkms_2.1.0.1-0ubuntu1_all.deb
  3. /pool/restricted/b/bcmwl/bcmwl-kernel-source_5.10.91.9+bdcom-0ubuntu4_i386.deb
I found each in synaptic, with only the last installed under a slightly different name, but the same version and type. I then installed the other two dependencies, and let her fly. Rebooted, went to System, Administration, Hardware Drivers, Ta-da! Just have to activate and it is good to go!