Update: With the release of Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope the wifi on a Samsung Q210 works right out of the box. Upgrade now!

I couldn’t go any longer without my own computer, so after a few days intensive research I’ve gone and splunged down the money for a Samsung Q210 ultraportable.

Naturally, the first thing I did after pulling faces at the pre-installed Vista was to install the latest Ubuntu Intrepid Ibex release. As always with Ubuntu things went swimmingly – booted from a USB key image and Ubuntu was installed.

However, getting wifi working (using FOSS and not ndiswrapper ::spit:: ) took a bit of figuring out, but is actually quite simple.

Step 1: Disable native drivers

Goto System => Administration => Hardware Drivers and deactivate the “Support for Atheros 802.11.wireless LAN cards” option.

Step 2: Install prerequisites

• sudo apt-get update
• sudo apt-get install build-essential
• sudo apt-get install subversion

Step 3: Download MadWifi drivers via svn

There is a patched version of MadWifi that enables support for the Q210s wireless card, the Atheros AR242x.

• cd /usr/src
• sudo svn checkout http://svn.madwifi.org/madwifi/branches/madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6 madwifi-hal-0.20.5.6

This may be updated in the future, so keep an eye on this thread to see how things progress.

Step 4: Install

• cd madwifi-hal-0.10.5.6
• sudo make
• sudo make install
• sudo modprobe ath_pci

Finally,tell Ubuntu to load the appropriate module at boot:

• sudo gedit /etc/modules

and add this to the end of the file:

• ath_pci

You should now be able to reboot and see your locla wireless networks in Network Manager!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 19th, 2008 at 3:06 pm and is filed under Geekitude. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.