My Acer wireless doesn’t work!

After spending the last month trying to figure out why the wireless wasn’t working on my Acer (Aspire 3680) laptop, I came across this little driver which enables the Wi-Fi switch, and it works a charm!

If you know Linux like the back of your hand, just take a look at the acer-acpi project, and acer-acpi-deb where you will find the .deb files.

First up: the drivers for my wireless were already loaded. If there are no drivers available for your wireless card then this is not for you. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, don’t worry!

This little trick works for many Acer laptop models, and quite a few other brands as well (have a look at the Supported Hardware for an incomplete list).

First up, we need to download the digital “signature” of the nice people who package the acer-acpi drivers, so that we can be sure they are who they say they are. Open up Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, and type this bizarre line of code:

wget http://www.mumblyworld.info/ubuntu/depot.key -O- | sudo apt-key add -

Make sure you get it all! You will need to put in your password when it asks. (And yes, even though it doesn’t give you any indication, your password is going in. Just type it and press Enter.)

Basicaly, wget downloads the digital signature (key), and then the little | symbol sends it to the next program, apt-key, which adds it to our list of trusted keys. sudo means super-user do, and that will be explained in a future tutorial

Next, we need to add the repository that contains the Ubuntu-compatible packages of this driver. Open up System -> Administration -> Synaptic Package Manager (if you’ve never used this program, check out my other post first). Then click Settings -> Repositories. This is where you edit which repositories (software databases) you want to search. Click on the Third Party Software tab, and then click Add:

In the box, enter:

deb http://www.mumblyworld.info/ubuntu gutsy main

or, if you are using a different version of Ubuntu, replace gutsy with its nickname (for example, if you are using Ubuntu 7.04, replace gutsy with feisty.

Click Add Source, and it should show up in the Software Sources window. Make sure it is checked (enabled), then press Close.

It may pop up a warning letting you know that you need to reload the software database. This is fine.

Back in Synaptic, click the Reload button (top left corner), and wait for it to download the new package information from the internet (this may take a while). Then scroll down and find the package called acer-acpi. Double-click it, so that it turns green (ready to install):

Click Apply, and the new acer-acpi drivers will be installed! This may be enough, and they will get loaded when you restart your computer. If not, we can force them to be loaded. Just open Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal, and type in:

sudo gedit /etc/modules

followed by your password if it asks. This file contains drivers to load, even if the computer doesn’t think you need them (it does no harm if you load drivers for hardware you don’t have). Each driver should be on a new line, so at the bottom of the file, on a new line, type in acer_acpi (use an underscore ‘_’ this time, not a hyphen ‘-’).

Save the file and close. You can now restart your computer, and the new drivers should be loaded!

~ub

Tags: acer, drivers