EasyWirelessDrivers
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Launchpad entry: none yet
Packages affected:
Summary
To help users requiring ndiswrapper for their wireless cards to get online with as little hassle as possible
Rationale
Ubuntu prides itself on superior hardware detection, but like other distros it is still weak in wireless networking as open source drivers are not available for many cards. An increasing number of desktop users have wireless network cards, often as the only source of connecting to the Internet. On a new install, many of these cards require ndiswrapper to work. Finding this out and knowing what to do about it is rather tricky when you don't have any Internet access. Additionally it requires the command line to get working using programs on the CD but not installed even though a graphical utility, ndisgtk, isavailable (in universe)
Use cases
* Leonardo has just installed Ubuntu, but it isn't connected to the Internet even though his wireless card is attached. He has the driver CD for the card, but no idea how install the driver. (Of course if he searched in Help for wireless cards he would find this information, but that's users for you) * Raphael has a wireless card, but he doesn't know what make it is or what drivers he would need to install with ndiswrapper, and doesn't realise it can be found on the CD as he doesn't have the magic of Google to help him * Michelagelo wants to get on the Internet to order some pizza, but is scared to use the command line, and confused as to why a graphical tool to help him is only available via the Internet * Donatello had his wireless card, knows he needs ndiswrapper, but has Internet access to et the drivers and wishes someone could try to bug the most common wireless manufacturers to let Ubuntu distribute the blobs on the CD
Scope
This spec tries to alert the user that their wireless card has been found but the drivers not yet installed, and guide them through setting up the hardware (a Wizard if you will), by extending the functionality of ndisgtk, the ndiswrapper graphical utility.
A secondary (less practical) idea is to get as many of the major wireless chipset vendors to allow Ubuntu to distribute the driver blobs on the CD (clearly marked as being unsupported) which could then be automagically set up for the right wireless cards
Design
* Cards that require ndiswrapper drivers would be detected using PCI-ID information from http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/mediawiki/index.php/List * A hal rule for these wireless devices to create a notification bubble saying that the wireless card has been detected which when clicked on would run something similar to/based on ndisgtk. * When run, this would prompt for the relevant CD or * suggest which driver needs downloading from where with simple instructions on how to set up after downloading (obviously this step can still prove problematic, with no internet access...) * On insertion of CD find relevant .inf file and setup ndiswrapper using the functions of ndisgtk * implement workarounds as necessary such as blacklisting bcm4xxx? module for the correct cards identified via pci-id * include ndiswrapper and ndisgtk-ng on the default install so all this can happen automagically (requires promotion of ndisgtk to main)
Implementation
Code
Data preservation and migration
Unresolved issues