wifi help

[rustysail]

hello
I'm running kubuntu on a Dell Dimension 3000
It is working fine but it doesn't support my wireless usb adapter. That is my only way to acess the net so I can't do much with linux till I get it running. My usb adapter is the dell wireless 1450 wireless usb adapter So far I have gone into apget and installed the ndiswrapper package. I have also searched for many tutorials that I hoped would fix my problem none of them work though. My windows driver that I downloaded is in exe format which I now know is not supported in linux.
Thank you
RustySail

[Zelmo]

It looks like you can still use ndiswrapper once you get the .inf file extracted from the driver download. To do that, you have a couple of options:
1. Boot into Windows and run the driver setup, make a note of where it extracts the installation files, and make that location accessible to Linux. Then boot Linux and copy the .inf file to a convenient location where you can use it with ndiswrapper.
2. Use wine to run the installer. It will extract the files just fine, but will error out when it tries to actually install the files. What's important is that you'll have some .inf file to choose from, which will have been extracted to ~/.wine/drive_c/Dell/Drivers/R83097/AR by default. (Note that there is also an IR directory which contains files by the same name, but the time stamp on one of them is different, and the file size of another is slightly different. If the driver from one directory doesn't work, try the other, unless you happen to know which one is right, assuming there's a right one and a less right one.) Then you can use ndiswrapper with the appropriate .inf file.

[rustysail]

Is there a way to actually open up ndiswrapper as a program. I'm new to linux and since I don't have an internet connection yet it is difficult to learn the command promp.

[Zelmo]

I never knew about this until now, but someone has made a frontend to ndiswrapper for Debian. I have no idea how well it works, but you can give it a try.
Really, ndiswrapper is plenty easy to use on the command line. You can check out the man page for complete instructions ($man ndiswrapper), but all you really need to do is

#ndiswrapper -i /home/rustysail/.wine/drive_c/Dell/Drivers/R83097/AR/bcmwl5a.inf

[rustysail]

I don't know whats going on. I have been using the install page for ndiswrapper and following it well.
I logged in as root using su the I typed the following code.

ndiswrapper -i /Desktop/driver/AR/bcmw15a.inf

(I also tried again adding home/rustysail to the beggining of the file path.
Both times I got the following error message.

installing bcmw15a
cp: cannot stat '/Desktop/driver/AR/bcmw15a.inf' :No such file or directory

Whats the deal? I did what it told me to and I know that that I put the driver folder on my desktop.

[BitTorrentBuddha]

leave it in wine's virtual drive_c and use the command that zelmo said.

[Zelmo]

I think the problem here is the filename. It looks like you're typing bcmw15a.inf, but the file's name is bcmwl5a.inf (with a lower-case L, not a 1). If that's the case, try it again with the full path, i.e.:
#ndiswrapper -i /home/rustysail/Desktop/driver/AR/bcmwl5a.inf

To make it easier, try hitting Tab after the first few letters of each directory or file if the name is long. It should auto-complete the name for you.

[rustysail]

Worked like a charm thanks but now I've got a new problem.

I did the command ndiswrapper -l and it popped up as driver present, but it did not say hardware present and when I opened up the wireless lan utility there was no signal.

[Zelmo]

OK, that means it's not the right driver. You'll just have to try each of the other drivers in the download until you find the one that works.

[rustysail]

hmm Dell is really beginning to piss me off. I tried every single one of those inf files. Then I went into windows and downloaded two more things with drivers. I installed those. None of them worked. Is there something that I need to do to show linux my hardware?