Installing wireless on Linux Ubuntu or Mint

April 9, 2012

Installing RT5370

RT5370 is a very small usb wireless wifi transmitter. It comes with a default windows driver, which is unfortunate if you have linux installed. To enable this usb wireless transmitter just follow these steps. I hope it helps someone as it was quite problematic for myself.

  1. goto http://www.ralinktech.com
  2. (actual drive page: http://www.ralinktech.com/en/04_support/support.php?sn=501
  3. Download the RT5370 usb driver and extract on desktop
  4. Open Terminal

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo su
make
make install
modprobe rt5370sta
exit

– or – 

sudo apt-get install build-essential
sudo su
make clean
make
modprobe -r rt5370sta
modprobe rt5370sta
exit

Installing Dell 5150c

Installing Dell 5150c wireless 1450 Ubuntu 11.04 or later. This guide will help you install a wireless device which cannot be recognised by ubuntu / lubuntu by default. The wireless device may only have a windows driver which is enough to get you setup.

  1. Make sure you have a wired connection to the router
  2. plug in the machine to get internet access
  3. install wine on ubuntu by apt-get install wine
  4. download drivers from support.dell.com (R138111.exe)
  5. install ndiswrapper-common, ndiswrapper-utils, ndis-gtk (you have to download the .deb files and install them manually)
  6. run the installation file R138111.exe and it should install (with errors)

Extracting the INF files

  1. open terminal and go to ~/.wine/
  2. you should see a C drive. Go to program files/dell drivers/2k (cant remember the whole path but its somewhere there.)
  3. zip the whole folder 2k by using (sudo zip 2k 2k.zip -r)
  4. copy the zip file to desktop
  5. install and launch ndiswrapper (all of them)
  6. launch ndiswrapper gui and add the new INF driver
  7. bingo it should work.

For Lubuntu Users you might notice that the network manager does not automatically start (LXNM does not start automatically). Please follow the following steps:

  1. open terminal and enter sudo apt-get install build-essential
  2. sudo nano /etc/modules and add in ndiswrapper in the last line
  3. open terminal and enter sudo ndiswrapper -l
  4. you should see your wireless network installed (if not refer to above)
  5. type sudo ndiswrapper -m
  6. type sudo ndiswrapper -ma
  7. type sudo ndiswrapper -mi
  8. type sudo rmmod ndiswrapper && sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
  9. once you reboot, it should now automatically connect you.

if you hate LXNM (default network manager for lubuntu), i suggest you install wicd (http://wicd.sourceforge.net/)

  1. sudo apt-get install build-essential
  2. sudo apt-get install wicd

Other notes:

In my case, i had to set the router settings to WEP Open System (64bit). I know it not secure, but this is to get over some detection settings.

references:

  • https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper
  • http://www.bgevolution.com/blog/ndiswrapper-ubuntu-wifi-in-4-easy-steps/
  • http://forum.lxde.org/viewtopic.php?t=81&f=6