[LinuxInnovation]

Lots of new Linux users have probably found that connecting to a wireless network is no walk in the park. It seems like a task that is near imposable. What does it take to get connected to the internet? I my self have wondered the same thing. I cant figure it out, I have a wireless card and router set up, they work fine with vista, but when I go on Ubuntu I don't know what to do. Does anybody know how to get connected?

[bigtomrodney]

Networking in Ubuntu with NetworkManager is very straightforward, about as easy as it could be. The difficulty is whether or not you have drivers for your wireless card. Intel and Atheros based cards along with some ralink and Prism based cards work fine. The difficulty is the Broadcom cards which are frequently used by manufacturers because of their low cost. They do have an open source driver but no open firmware and it still only functions at low speed. Generally ndiswrapper is used to allow the Windows driver to work.

The difficulty is just figuring out this end of things because it's not like anything that a Windows user would have had to do before. If you card has a driver you simply click on the network manager icon beside your clock on the top panel. When it works you will see a list of available networks to join - choose, enter your encryption key the first time (only) and you're good to go. Figuring out ndiswrapper is a little bit more work but only the first time.

[kostasan]

Go to system->Administration->Hardware Drivers and it will tell you which drivers it needs to install. In order to do this though, you need to be connected to internet, so you have to connect first via ethernet.