Thought I’d recap some of my steps to getting a wifi PC running Ubuntu a reality. Having suffered a bit of a set back a few days ago when I got a new monitor and a screen resolution that would not show, I was able to get back up to speed following these steps:
1. Download the latest version of Ubuntu 7.10 (7.04 has a bug relating to the D-Link DWL-520+ PCI wireless card that is a mystery not worth trying to solve – trust me on this, please!). BTW, the download – on a high speed connection – took me nearly four hours.
http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/gutsy/beta/
2. Since the computer I planned to put Ubuntu on was not connected to the internet, I needed to burn a DVD of Ubuntu and then use that to load the system. How you burn the DVD is important as I wasted several discs learning that not all methods work. On a PC, I was successful using Infra Recorder and on a Mac, Disk Utility. The Ubuntu site has a more detailed ‘How To’ page which I highly recommend:
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/BurningIsoHowto
3. Insert the DVD in the computer, then restart (I just killed the power to the PC by turning off the power strip so that the DVD would be in the machine for the restart, then turned the power back on – however, that’s a step I’m NOT willing to recommend to anybody else even though I’ve never had a problem doing it! 🙂
4. Once you’ve got Ubuntu loaded up, your wireless signal should show up in the Network Manager and then it’s simply a matter of connecting to it. With 7.10 I didn’t have to do any command line tweaks at all – yay!