Kubuntu 8.04 on a Dell XPS M1330 laptop... how to get wireless working

[Nigel Ridley]

Robert Menes wrote:
> Greetings, fellow Kubuntu users! Yesterday, I helped a co-worker install
> Kubuntu 8.04 on his laptop.
> 
> The laptop is a Dell XPS M1330 laptop with a Core 2 Duo CPU, 3GB of RAM,
> 250GB HD with WinXP Pro SP2
> and Kubuntu dual-booting, fingerprint reader, nVidia GeForce Go 8400M GS
> video card (128MB RAM), Bluetooth,
> High Definition Audio 2.0 (unknown chipset), and integrated 10/100 network
> card and PCI wireless card.
> 
> Most of the hardware works out of the box, save for the nVidia card and the
> PCI wireless card. Installing the restricted
> nVidia driver (nvidia-glx-new) worked and allowed Compiz Fusion to work, but
> the PCI card is baffling me.
> 
> According to KInfoCenter, the card appears to be a BroadCom based card,
> meaning that I may need the firmware
> wrapper for Kubuntu 8.04. However, another page detailing an Ubuntu install
> on the same model laptop
> https://wiki.ubuntu.com/InstallingUbuntuOnADellXPSM1330 says that the
> wireless PCI is in fact an Intel
> Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini Card. Rather than simply install the BroadCom
> firmware for nothing, I wanted to know
> if anyone else with this same hardware can confirm for me who the
> manufacturer is, and what steps should I take
> to enable it.
> 
> For reference, I have attached the output of lspci, lspci -n, lsmod, dmesg,
> and /proc/cpuinfo. Thanks for everyone's help!
> 
> --Rob
> (If it ain't Linux, it stinks :P)
> 

Did you get it working yet?
I have a Dell Inspiron 1525 with the Broadcom wireless card, whilst a friend that also has a Dell 
Inspiron 1525 has the Intel wireless card! I'm not sure why Dell installs different hardware on 
the same laptop models.

Anyway, I manually installed the Broadcom drivers using ndiswrapper (I followed the instructions 
on the Ubuntu wiki - you can do a simple search) but now I see that there has been an update and 
apparently the drivers are now available in the standard repos.

Blessings,

Nigel

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