NOOB status: Configure wireless card for Ubuntu 11.10

[ibthevivin]

I'm completely new to Linux and I've been playing around with it for about 2 days. I've picked up on some things pretty quick, but I just can't seem to understand how to install the appropriate drivers for the wireless card I've installed.

Currently the proprietary drivers are installed and I have slow web browsing performance. What would be the appropriate fix? Installing drivers meant for my wireless card (Intel Centrino 6230) or are the proprietary drivers enough but something else is slowing my web performance?

My dad is running quick on Windows 7 but I'm slower since I've switched.

For the record, I've been to www.intellinuxwireless.org and found the specific drivers for my card, but I'm unsure of how to install tar.gz files. Am I supposed to use the terminal? If so, how (if someone could provide me a good instructional website)?

[rubberman]

You might also want to check out www.linuxwireless.org - they have most of these drivers, as well as decent instructions on how to install them. In your case, a tar.gz file is a compressed archive. First do this from a command-line window (console):

tar -zxvf filename.tar.gz

This should create a new directory and put the extracted files there. Move into that directory (cd dirname) and see if there are some text files such as README, INSTALL, etc. or something like that. Read those. Tell us what you find in the directory and we can then help you start from there if you still need help.

[ibthevivin]

Below is the installation instructions. My understanding is that before installing the ucode file I need to install a iwlagn driver, which I don't know where to find or how to install. I tried "sudo apt-get install iwlagn" but that didn't work.

This is the very first manual driver install I'm making, so please treat me as ignorant and hold my hand. I'm willing to do the research, so if anyone can provide a website or reference guide as to how to do this, that'd be appreciated. The issue is I've been reading so many conflicting and/or incomplete tutorials that skip steps and I get lost. :/

Thank you Daniweb users!

2. INSTALLATION

The iwlagn driver will look for the file iwlwifi-6000g2b-5.ucode using the kernel's firmware_class infrastructure. More information can be found under Documentation/firmware_class in kernel source. In order to function correctly, you need to have this support enabled in your kernel. When you configure the kernel, you can find this option in the following location:

Device Drivers -> Generic Driver Options -> Userspace firmware loading support

You can determine if your kernel currently has firmware loader support by looking for the CONFIG_FW_LOADER definition on your kernel's .config.

In addition to having the firmware_class support in your kernel, you must also have a working udev and uevent infrastructure configured. The steps for installing and configuring udev are very distribution specific.

Once you have the firmware loader in place (or if you aren't sure and you just want to try things to see if it works), you need to install the microcode file into the appropriate location.

Where that appropriate location is depends (again) on your system distribution. You can typically find this location by looking in the udev scripts of your distro, the default is /lib/firmware.

Installation of the firmware is simply:

% cp iwlwifi-6000g2b-5.ucode /lib/firmware

You can now load the driver (see the INSTALL and README.iwlwifi provided with the iwlwifi package for information on building and using that driver.)

[ibthevivin]

Stupid question...

are tar.gz files and tgz files different?

The file I'm speaking of ends with .tgz

I'm guessing it is. When I extracted the contents of the .tgz file there were no configure files and no make files. Apparently I'm dealing with a .ucode file.

I'm following instructions from this site: http://www.tuxfiles.org/linuxhelp/softinstall.html

I especially don't understand the instructions of how to get superuser permissions.

Thank you!