Pine Trail Tweaks: Wireless

I have nothing but good things to say (and show) about my netbook.

Xubuntu is my choice netbook operating system. It is fast and light yet full-featured enough to for my everyday use. However, not every feature on my Pine Trail netbook works "out of the box". This is no fault of Xubuntu. Unfortunately, some manufacturers change their hardware specifications without releasing the appropriate open software (drivers) to run it or even what those specifications are so others can work on it. These issues should be solved eventually, perhaps in the next major revision of the system, but fortunately for us this is Linux, and we can get it to work right now via a little tinkering.

This is the first of several articles to deal with these technical issues. For reference, I am using Xubuntu 10.04 (also referred to as "Lucid Lynx") on an Asus Eee PC 1001P-MU17-BK.

Wireless

Probably the most critical issue is that with the wireless drivers. After all, what good it a netbook without the 'net? Wireless doesn't work out of the box on these models with Xubuntu (yet). There are two ways I know to go about solving this.

The first method:

Go to support.Asus.com, go through the pop-up menus to select your product, model, etc, and download the Windows XP driver named: Wireless Lan Driver for Win XP (Wlan: NE785H_GE112H)

Then enter this in a terminal window:
sudo apt-get install ndiswrapper-common ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 ndisgtk

This is the way I did it the first time around, so forgive me if I missed some steps. It's been a few months since I did this. The idea here is that you are using Asus' own hardware driver, but "wrapping it" with something Linux can understand and use, since Asus has not released native Linux drivers for this model. Other drivers on the download page may work, but that is the only one I know does work for sure.

If your netbook is not an Asus, the process will probably go similarly, obviously substituting your netbook's manufacturer's site for that of Asus'.

This time around, I went about it a different way, though. Instead of manually downloading the Asus driver and wrapper, I utilized the Backports repository. This should be a more "universal" fix. And it was instructional in two ways. Not only did I solve my wireless issue, but I learned how to enable the Ubuntu Backports repository, which comes in very handy. This page has a good explanation of what Backports are. Turning them on is easy. You do this by typing into your terminal:

sudo nano /etc/apt/sources.list

Nano is the default xubuntu text editor and good enough for me, but you can use any one, of course. You must use the "sudo" command at the beginning, otherwise you will not be able to edit the document without root privileges.

Now you should see the repository sources file come up. The Backports repository address is already present in the file. The lines you are looking for are:

# deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner
# deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu lucid partner

All you have to do is uncomment it so that it becomes active. That is, simply remove the "#" characters at the beginning of the line. Then hit Ctrl-0 and Enter to save the file.

After you've closed it, start the Synaptic Package Manager. Hit reload and let it update and rebuild the search index. When it's ready, search for the term "wireless". One of the search results should be titled:

linux-backports-modules-wireless-lucid-generic

Mark this for installation and apply. Quit the package manager and reboot for good measure. I've heard crossing your fingers during rebooting also helps. Congratulations! Wireless should now work on your netbook!

A lot of the information here came from this handy thread on the Ubuntu Forums.