Ubuntu WiFi Issues

Gotr

Here's my dilemma: I am new to Ubuntu, and Linux in general. My computer runs on a x86 architecture. Most of the other hardware works properly, but there's one problem:

I have a D-Link DWL-520 WiFi card. It's no longer supported by D-Link, but it is supported by Ndiswrapper. So I went through the steps of downloading Ndiswrapper and installing it. The installation went smoothly. Next thing I did was tried to run the GUI application "Windows Wireless Drivers", which is part of Ndiswrapper.

(I did the following many, many times, but this is the account of my last attempt)

I ran lscpci in Terminal, and it didn't detect my WiFi card, but it did detect a Netprism device, which is the name of the driver on the CD that came with the card. So I assumed (correctly, I think) that Netprism made the device and D-Link sold it. So I moved the drivers from the disk to ~/Drivers (a directory I created) and ran "WWD", and it said that the drivers were installed but that the hardware wasn't installed. I ran sudo rmdir /etc/ndiswrapper/netprism after clearing out the directory, and decided to take a different route.

In Terminal I ran sudo ndiswrapper -i ~/drivers/NETPRISM.inf and checked Ndiswrapper's directory, which seemed to be working. then I did this (first line input, following output):

ndiswrapper -l
netprism:driver installed
     hardware present (pci2_prism alternate driver)

or at leat very close to that, I'm paraphrasing as I'm not going to reboot three times just to get an exact quote if it's not neccesary. Great, right? Not really. I run

sudo depmod -a
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
tail /var/log/messages

Now I'd done this before, so while there were some old errors, there weren't any errors within the last 10 minutes. All good? Nope. iwconfig nor ifconfig picked up the card, and I couldn't connect with the network utility. What did I do wrong? Should I look on the Ndiswrapper site for another driver? I tried to blacklist the alternate driver, and then no drivers binded to the card. Ubuntu does detect my ethernet connection, but I can't run that connection to the internet for at least another week, and I'd like to Internetify Ubuntu before then.

Thanks so much! This has been frustrating me for around a week now!

UPDATE: Now Ubuntu won't even boot with the WiFi card plugged into the motherboard. This is frustrating the hell out of me...

MKR

Maybe this will help.

The post is a bit old, but I'm pretty sure the installation procedure has remained the same.

Gotr

Thank you, I'll give that a try.

Gotr

Unfortunately, I was unable to accomplish that. It seems like it requires a web connection, which I don't have on Ubuntu. While I can download the tars to my Windows partition and move them to my home folder, Synaptic doesn't want to install the packages, and I don't know how to do so in Terminal. I'm a Linux novice, I'm afraid.

MKR

I have about as much experience with wi-fi in Linux, unfortunately. My recommendation would be to get a wi-fi card that's Linux-friendly (like an Intel). The older the card, the less likely it is you'll find a guide that's still relevant.

Gotr

Thanks. I'm going to be hooking up a compatible Ethernet connection ASAP, but ASAP might be in a week and I'd like to start exploring Ubuntu before then. Thanks for the suggestion, though. I guess I just wait.