About a month ago, I installed Ubuntu on my laptop as a second OS. Vista Home Premium was the original and workhorse of the two OS’s.  I have fell in love with Ubuntu so I decided to clean my laptop of Vista and install Ubuntu 8.04 as my only OS. During each install of Ubuntu, I noticed that setting up wireless can be a pain. I will share a few quick and easy steps to get your wireless and Ubuntu working.

My wireless lan controller is from Broadcom so these steps are specifically for this controller.

First, open and terminal and type the following code:

sudo aptitude update

This will update your system with all the available packages.

Second, go to System –> Administration –> Synaptic Package Manager. Search for b43-fwcutter and install it. This will install the firmware for your wireless card.

Finally, go to Connect to Wireless Network and enter the necessary information.

That should do it. These are the steps I have followed each time I needed to setup wireless for Ubuntu. Please let me know if this does or does not work for you. Good luck!