WIFI in acer one zg5 ubuntu

Hello dear friends,

I bought a used acer aspire one zg5 with ubuntu and everything is ok but the WIFI...I am a novice in Linux but I know at least something...the wired lan network works fine but the WIFI is not working at all...the front wifi light is off and not showing at all...and I do not have even the possibility to run the wifi network search or even anything on the wifi manager...

I am freaking out so I would greatly appreciate any kind off help

 

What version of Ubuntu are you using?

Have you tried a live CD using either a portable cd drive or a bootable usb stick?
The later versions of Ubuntu such as 9.04 or 9.10 RC should work 'out of the box'.

From your current version you could type lspci from the terminal to see if the OS detected the wifi card.
It should most likely be the atheros 242 and it will use the ath5k driver.

 

So I have a aspire one I bought a month ago that came with XP I dual booted Ubuntu Koala and had no wireless and or it was intermittent. Which version of Ubuntu is your set up with is my 1st question. A fairly easy fix without editing the associated files is to install wicd which is in synaptic, this will remove the network manager and replace it with a 3rd party wicd. You might just try to reinstall the network manager 1st by going to synaptic and right clicking on network manager and ticking the reinstall, before you try wicd. If you install wicd install then reboot your computer so that you get the applet in the notification area where network manager resides right now.
If your using Linpus I am not familiar with that distribution so I don't know the fix for it's wireless setup. My computer shows no light when running wired or wireless so the applet in the notification area will tell if your on line with a right or left click.

 

Well my version is Ubuntu 9.04 jaunty, kernel linux 2.6.2.8 - generic, Gnome 2.26.1

and the output for lspci shows that I have a Ethernet conntroller ;: atheros communiction Inc. AR242x 802.11abg wireless pci express adapter (rev 01)

regards

 

I did all as you said but when I open the wicd icon it says there is no wireless connestion...also what is intresting when i looked at the preferences the wire interface is eth0 and the wireless has a blank space - also the WPA driver is WEXT...

regards

 

So all of you that are having wireless and general problems with connecting to the net might want to also post on the Ubuntu Forums, This forum is a good site with knowledgeable people but seems to have a smaller base of people available to get a quicker response, that actually address a driver not being recognized or a need for download. I disagree that 9.04 and 9.10 work out of the box on the acer aspire series in general. They may work with the thumbdrive and standard release but once you install and start updating things can go south so to speak if your not familiar with checking the update and making sure things that what you want are installed. The best way to get a response on the other forums is to have a clear thread title then list your computer and the exact distro, don't just say linux or Ubuntu but the actual distro your running in the problem description. It appears that generally it is a driver recognition problem, personally I just install wicd and this works every time generally, but I am a long term Linux user so I may be also tweaking in other ways that a person who is new to the Linux setup may not realize. The Ubuntu Forums are a excellent resource as well as this site but at the UF you have over a million people who have joined and around 600,000 who are using it on occasion and a smaller core of avid helpers who are checking the posts constantly. There is actual a moblin part of the forums so you can go there if your running linpus or moblin which I think are related, as of now.
http://ubuntuforums.org/
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.ph ... une=&f=376
There is also a apple part of the forum.
http://ubuntuforums.org/forumdisplay.ph ... une=&f=328
If you join just click on the new posts go to the bottom of the page to forum jump to get a more accurate list of areas on them compared to the front home page listings.