sudo apt-get me a little help here, people?

October 17, 2010 10:11 AM

Can the Belkin play USB wireless card work w Ubuntu & if not recommendations?

Full disclosure, utter Linux N00b.
My laptop's fan died, so in the interim when I decide to fix or get a new one, I turned my brother's ancient laptop into a Linux machine. I am running Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala, with GNOME desktop.

Dang I love it, but bro's machine didn't have wireless. I bought the Belkin play usb wireless card, and cannot seem to get it to work. Following this user's thread on Ubuntu forums, I did exactly as he did, and with almost exactly the same results. I can "see" the driver installed with ndiswrapper, and can see the hardware, but cannot see it in network or network connections, and wireless card does not show green nor does it work at all.

Following the advice here, it appears that the Belkin play's chipset might not be supported in Ubuntu.

So question is? What can I do to get this to work in Ubuntu, and if not supported, advice on USB wireless cards to purchase?

posted by xetere to Computers & Internet (3 answers total)

Here seems as good a place to start as any.
posted by Biru at 10:33 AM on October 17, 2010

Response by poster: Thanks Biru, that page was in my ask, it told me that my Play isn't going to play, alas. There are so many choices, that I was wondering if anyone had any personal experiences/recommendations. Should've added that to my original question.
posted by xetere at 11:20 AM on October 17, 2010 [1 favorite]

Good lord, how silly of me. Yes, Ubuntu is one of the better distros, though you seem to be a little behind. I think the current version is something like 10.04 or thereabouts. Perhaps try updating and if you're in luck, there may even be a driver included in the latest release for your hardware. Failing that, Broadcom internal wifi cards, of the type used in Macs and most Dells work, though they have a proprietary driver in Ubuntu. Some people are bothered by the fact that it's not open source, though I for one only care if it makes my card work, which it does. They're quite cheap too, and there are countless HOWTOs on fitting them to your netbook/laptop etc. Search under Broadcom Wifi Hackintosh and you'll see what I mean.

In fact: Here is a guide which you should be able to follow. The principles are the same for any laptop.

As for USB adapters, I used one which was a Linksys W-USB54G and it worked perfectly, no faffing around, nothing. Just check that you get one with the right chipset. Apparently there are one or two different variants, going by that list.
posted by Biru at 12:26 PM on October 17, 2010