That worked OK, and I ran ndiswrapper for a while. Then I noticed that I was having some instability, especially after I upgraded to the latest versions of the Linux kernel, and as I tried different things to find a fix, I came to the conclusion that ndiswrapper was the culprit. So I went back to searching for a way to get my wireless card to work without ndiswrapper, using native Linux drivers. Turns out it was easy.
Many Linksys cards (and other brands as well) use the Broadcom B43 chipset, but the version of the hardware isn't quite compatible with the firmware that comes with current Linux distros. Luckily, there's a B43 firmware update available. To install it, get connected to a wired connection, open a terminal and type these commands:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
Bada bing! The wireless card comes on-line. Now, if you haven't done it already, right-click the network icon in the menu panel, and select "Edit Connections". Click the Wireless tab, and add a connection (or edit the existing one). Enter the SSID of your wireless network and enter your security key, and you should be good to go!
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Actual command is suppose to be the following:
ReplyDeletesudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
Duh! Of course it is :)
ReplyDeleteThanks a lot. works like a charm !
ReplyDeleteThanks it worked...
ReplyDeleteI just tried this and failed... I think? Linksys N300 still not recognized after adding network SSID & Password. Desktop not laptop--does that matter?
ReplyDeleteThe N300 likely has a different chipset than the older adapters that used the b43 firmware, so this article probably won't help you. You'll need to figure out what chipset your adapter has, and then find out how to install that firmware on your linux installation. Hope that helps.
ReplyDeleteI lost my original linksys disk, and couldn't get any of the on-line drivers to work with ndiswrapper. This worked perfectly and better than before. My card is a WPC54G v3.0 PCMCIA
ReplyDeleteWorks great also with the Linksys/Cisco WPC54GS ver 2. However, it did not work with the WPC54GX4.
ReplyDelete