New Lenovo T61 Ath9k not working
I bought this PC in the US since in my home country I haven't been able to find a laptop fully compatible with GNU. The issue is that I cannot connect through Wifi when I'm using Trisquel 6/7 or Gnewsense 3/4. I connected to the Internet now with Lubuntu 13.04... As far as I know the driver is already in the Linux Kernel, so there shouldn't be any issue using Wifi, but there is... I have tried many troubleshootings that I've found in forums but yet I'm unable to use wifi. Aside from that when I apt-get update, there seems to be an error at the end. I reinstalled the kernel already, but it doesn't seem to work...
Not all ath9k chipsets have free firmware. What is yours? 'lspci' (to be executed in a terminal) would tell.
Maybe it's this?
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Custom_BIOS
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Middleton%27s_BIOS
(AFAIK there's no Libreboot or even Coreboot for the T61)
(P.s. then again, your system could boot so maybe it's not that)
Installing Middleton BIOS now... (I had to boot into Windows 10 32 bits to do so because it seems the 64 bits is not compatible...)
Any USB dongle would work?
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (primary) (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (secondary) (rev 0c)
00:19.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82566MM Gigabit Network Connection (rev 03)
00:1a.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03)
00:1c.4 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 5 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M-E) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev ba)
15:00.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C832 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 04)
15:00.2 SD Host controller: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 21)
15:00.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 11)
15:00.5 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 11)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 4965 AG or AGN [Kedron] Network Connection (rev 61)
It is an Intel chipset, not an Atheros one. There is no free firmware for Intel chipsets.
Like Heather wrote, you need a Wifi dongle with a supported chipset. AR9170, AR9270 or AR9271 for instance. The problem is: it is tough to know the chipset of a given model and, worse, a same model may be sold with different chipsets along its life (that is probably why, it is not even written on the wrapping). The safest solution is to buy from http://libre.thinkpenguin.com or http://tehnoetic.com (to the best of my knowledge, the only two vendors that guarantee that all their hardware work with Linux-libre, Trisquel's kernel). Or you take advice from https://trisquel.info/forum/14-fantastic-wifi-adaptor-tp-link-tl-wn722n (a recent post) and hope the chipset has not changed since then. Or you can try the second-hand market (if the vendor indicates the chipset).
I advise against substituting the internal card: Lenovo is known to white-list peripherals they "accept". A DRM at the hardware level...
Gosh, I wrote a huge text and I pressed one of the buttons to go back to the last page... hahaha... well, that may be what I would have to do, buy a USB dongle. I am not planning changing this PC though since the Integrated Graphics work, and in my Desktop PC they don't (Dell Optiplex 320) and I can run Gnewsense and Trisquel without any issue, just the Wifi connection thing...
Yeah, everything is working fine aside from that...
You sure you don't want to try to put a custom whitelist-removed BIOS on there, Heather?
How much would it cost me? And who would do it? I'm not sure I can do it myself. By the way, I'm from El Salvador, so sending it to someone who could it's not very plausible...
Free of charge, from (and with instructons in) http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Middleton's_BIOS (which in turn links to https://ia601508.us.archive.org/11/items/middletons-bios/Dual-IDA_SATA-II_Whitelist_SLIC21_Thermal_Sensing_Error_ThinkPad_T61_T61p_BIOS_%282.29-1.08%29.rar )?
Yeah, I installed it. I have a doubt about the SATA II, it mentions that it doesn't transmit data 1.5 mb/s or something like that, but with the custom BIOS is 3 mb/s. Does it mean my Hard Disk will be faster?