hi,
i m using Ubuntu 10.10 on my laptop and our college has got wifi campus. but my laptop does not detect any wifi connection available. is there any special package required?

Have you verified that your laptop's wifi driver is installed and working?

Rubberman has it. best thing to do is in a terminal:
sudo su 'to log in under super user
lshw -C Network 'to verify your wireless card. There, you can identify what kind of device you have and just do a search for a driver. once you have downloaded the driver for linux, you will need to unpack it to a folder. I recommend the home folder. again, under the terminal, you must get to the directory and into the folder.
cd /YOURHOMENAMEHERE/NAMEOFFOLDERFORDRIVER 'this will put you inside the folder
configure or ./configure 'may take some time.
make 'here, you may or may not have to rename a file. it will either be makefile but could need to be makefile.in after make is complete do:
make install 'this installs the driver

after doing this, you can restart your computer and you should be able to connect. you may have to turn the actual device on usually fn+a fkey. for example, mine is fn+f8

Apart from gg1706's suggestions, your wireless and/or networking simply might have been disabled. Try right clicking the network icon which is in the top panel by default, and enable if not ticked.

Or you can install wifi-radar, to check any wifi signals.

sudo apt-get install wifi-radar
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