Dell Wireless Question

10 respostas [Última entrada]
f13ticket
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Joined: 12/30/2009

I am trying to get my wireless working on a Dell Studio Laptop. Does anyone know how I can check to see what driver I am currently using for my wireless if any.

Thank GNU very much for your help.

Julius22
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Joined: 07/01/2010

You can try
sudo lshw -C network
or
nm-tool

f13ticket
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Joined: 12/30/2009

Hello.  They gave me the fallowing.  It keeps saying it is disabled.  I keep trying to turn it on, but this is a new laptop and I'm not sure if I'm doing it right.  Any suggestions?  Thank GNU. *-network DISABLED      
       description: Wireless interface
       product: Centrino Advanced-N 6200
       vendor: Intel Corporation
       physical id: 0
       bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
       logical name: wlan0
       version: 35
       serial: 00:23:14:aa:5a:e4
       width: 64 bits
       clock: 33MHz
       capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
       configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlagn latency=0 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11abgn
       resources: irq:36 memory:f0500000-f0501fff
 NetworkManager Tool

State: connected

- Device: wlan0 ----------------------------------------------------------------
  Type:              802.11 WiFi
  Driver:            iwlagn
  State:             disconnected
  Default:           no
  HW Address:       

  Capabilities:

  Wireless Properties
    WEP Encryption:  yes
    WPA Encryption:  yes
    WPA2 Encryption: yes

  Wireless Access Points
 

Julius22
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Joined: 07/01/2010

I think you need a non-free kernel as you can see here that your driver is deblobbed:
announce IWLAGN - "Intel Wireless WiFi Next Gen AGN"
reject_firmware drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-agn.c
clean_blob drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/iwl-agn.c
clean_kconfig drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/Kconfig 'IWLAGN'
clean_mk CONFIG_IWLAGN drivers/net/wireless/iwlwifi/Makefile

quidam

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I am a translator!

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Joined: 12/22/2004

> I think you need a non-free kernel as you can see here that your
> driver is deblobbed

I'd rather say you need a wifi card which works with free drivers.

f13ticket
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Joined: 12/30/2009

Do you know of any inexpensive ones that would work with a Dell Studio?  I bought one a long time ago but apparently laptops change as time goes by and it was too big for the slot of my old laptop and my new one too.  It plugged into my Grandma's laptop.  Thank GNU.

SirGrant

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Joined: 07/27/2010

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16833122272&Tpk=WG111

You can get refurbished Netgear WG111's with free shipping for 15 bucks. While only version 3 is on the FSF's foundations website (http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/index_html/net/wireless/index_html/cards.html) I have ordered two of those cards and gotten 1 version 3 and 1 verison 2. Version 2 also works with all free software (have tested it with trisquel and gnewsense).

Edit: This is assuming you live in the United States. I think newegg is only based there. If you live somewhere else in the world you will have to look around.

Julius22
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Joined: 07/01/2010

Yes, it's just a bad habit (I'm a newcomer to completely free distributions). I should have presented things in a different way like "You can use a non-free kernel in order to be able to use the non-free firmware. But that means using an other distribution and going against the really free software you want to support and defend by using Trisquel. Or you can change your hardware for a hardware that works with a free firmware and a free driver and then support manufacturers that permit the usage of free software."
And all this means you have to check if your hardware has really free drivers before buying it.

fabio

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Joined: 08/02/2010

It could be useful to have a web page on Trisquel's site with a list of free (or not free) wifi cards for helping trisquel users buying laptops, since in my opinion Wifi drivers and Wifi firmwares are actually the most critical point of  hardware compatibility in all the free distributions...

Julius22
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Joined: 07/01/2010

I think we, at least, need something about the drivers on the Trisquel website. But instead of creating and maintaining one page, we could link to the page of the FSF website that has already been given in this thread. This link can also be useful.

fabio

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Joined: 08/02/2010

Ops, sorry, I didn't see the SirGrant's post with the link of FSF's page! Very useful!