New to linux, wireless connestion problems

dangerousmouse · 9 Sep 2009 at 00:21

New to linux, wireless connection problems

i picked up an asrock ion 330 a couple of days ago. this will be used in my lounge mainly for watching films and internet use. having wanted to try linux for a while i thought i may aswell give it a go on this before possibly making a mistake on my other pc!

anyhoo, i opted for linux mint as this seems to be as good a starting point as any. installed fine form the live cd. plug in the usb wireless adaptor (linksys wusb54gr) and it seems to be working. the wireless icon has appeared on the desktop, and the power indicator on the adaptor is lit up.

click the wireless icon and a list of wireless networks is there, click on mine to connect to it, enter WPA key...nothing. just got the little dots and swirly thing happening. repeat messages to enter the wpa key.

there are a couple of unsecured pay per use networks (bt openzone) so i tried connecting to one of them. no problems.

is there any reason that linux doesnt seem to like me connecting to my home network?

thanks for any help offered.

EDIT: Updated, see post 6

leezer3 · 9 Sep 2009 at 01:44

Try with WEP encryption first, I'd suspect that the driver may well not like the WPA you're using

-Leezer-

BigglesPiP · 9 Sep 2009 at 02:40

Try setting the router to WPA with TKIP authentication, rather than AES, or AES&TKIP.

This is one area where the gnome network manager is shockingly bad, it often struggles to work on AES, and even if it is available, it won't let you manually select TKIP, which knetworkmanager (KDE) will. So you need to fiddle with the access point, you're stuffed if you're trying to access one you can't administer, well done gnome.

.walls · 9 Sep 2009 at 09:58

are you using ndiswrapper? Try a native driver if you are, ndiswrapper is ****.

Have a look here

dangerousmouse · 9 Sep 2009 at 17:23

.walls said:
are you using ndiswrapper? Try a native driver if you are, ndiswrapper is ****.

Have a look here

not a clue. literally installed linux and xp on it yesterday afternoon. never used linux before. will have a read of the link though.

as for the changing of the router settings, i will give that a crack when i get home. fingers crossed!

dangerousmouse · 10 Sep 2009 at 11:11

new to linux, wireless connection issues - updated

did some reading last night and found this mintwiki wiki stuff.

tried to install wicd in place of the bundled network manager. couldnt do this through synaptic without the internet connection so i had to download the package and install from a usb stick.

cant get it to install though as it has some sort of issue with the fact that network manager is already installed. cant seem to remove/disable network manager though!

any ideas?

cheers.

dangerousmouse · 10 Sep 2009 at 17:17

Problem solved!!!

connected by wired connection and installed the lniux mint updates. wifi seems to be working like a charm!