Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

[Guest]

Hi, I'm having some trouble getting my USB wireless dongle to be recognised by Kubuntu. The dongle itself is a MicroNEXT MN-WD546J USB wireless adaptor, and the drivers can't install, being an .exe file.

Is there any way to change this so that I can go online with Kubuntu?

My PC has XP and Kubuntu, Kubuntu was installed inside XP, version 10.04

[ardvark71]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

Hi...

While I was not able to find drivers for your exact model, I found an adapter that has linux drivers here, although I don't know if having a Wireless N adapter will affect the connection to your network (or modem) or not.

Are you running Kubuntu from WUBI?

Hope this helps.

Regards...

[Snowhog]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

Given that the device uses a Windows driver, and a compatible Linux driver isn't available, you might want to look into installing the ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 package (which will also install ndiswrapper-common).

ndiswrapper-utils-1.9
Description: Userspace utilities for the ndiswrapper Linux kernel module

Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a
Linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project implements
Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) API
within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for wireless network card is then
linked to this implementation so that the driver runs natively, as though
it is in Windows, without binary emulation.

ndiswrapper-common
Description: Common scripts required to use the utilities for ndiswrapper

Some vendors do not release specifications of the hardware or provide a
Linux driver for their wireless network cards. This project implements
Windows kernel API and NDIS (Network Driver Interface Specification) API
within Linux kernel. A Windows driver for wireless network card is then
linked to this implementation so that the driver runs natively, as though
it is in Windows, without binary emulation.
.
This package contains wrapper scripts to call out to the proper
versions of whatever -utils-X.X package is installed.

[ardvark71]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

Given that the device uses a Windows driver, and a compatible Linux driver isn't available, you might want to look into installing the ndiswrapper-utils-1.9 package

Thanks, Snowhog, I forgot about ndiswrapper.

Failing that, an adapter that offers linux drivers should do the trick.

Regards...

[anadox402]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

You should try sakis3g. It uses usb-modeswitch libraries to "switch" the device to run in modem mode and not act as a storage device. Which allows you to easily connect to the internet. Check the thread: http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/inde...5266#msg235266.

Hope this helps.

Anadox

[Ole Juul]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

The thing to consider when buying or trying to install one of these is the chipset. Brand and model is meaningless. In this case there is preciously little information when searching on "MN-WD546J chipset", but I did come up with this site which tells us that you have an RT2070. That is the crucial piece of information. Now, we can search on "Linux RT2070" and get the info we want.

Hmm, it looks like there is not yet a driver for that. There are lots of people asking the same thing, at it looks like the best advice is do use ndiswrapper, as mentioned above.

Don't throw it away though. I bought one of these generic cheapies 3 years ago and went through the same thing. Funnily, last night I decided to see if anything had changed in that world, and lo and behold, Debian has since gotten a driver for my chipset.

[ardvark71]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

Hmm, it looks like there is not yet a driver for that. There are lots of people asking the same thing, at it looks like the best advice is do use ndiswrapper, as mentioned above.

Hi Ole...

Good find, you refreshed my memory on the importance of finding chipset numbers.

Interestingly enough, according to an individual here, RT2070 works under the RT2870 driver in Fedora 11, although I have no idea if that is true or not. There are plenty of listings under Google for kmod-rt2870, the package in question. It may be possible to install an RPM of this module or driver using the "alien" package in the repositories (Synaptic,) or download the driver at Ralink's site here.

I will leave it up to you guys whether you feel this is a possible solution.

Regards...

[Ole Juul]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

ardvark71, I guess I was wrong. I missed that one. Yes, according to the Debian docs rt2870sta supports Ralink chipsets (RT2770/RT2870, RT3070/RT3071/RT3072). They say: "This experimental vendor driver is included as a staging driver in the mainline Linux kernel since 2.6.29-rc1."

So, let's google "Ubuntu 10.04 rt2870" and see what we get.

NixCraft has a solution.
LinuxQuestions has another.
One needs the right kernel as can be seen on this Ubuntu forum post.

I does look like it's going to work.

[GreyGeek]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8071728

[Ole Juul]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=8071728

Hopefully, with the kernel used for 10.04 the OP won't have to go that far. Presumably he can accomplish it all with apt-get like in Debian. I just can't find the Ubuntu firmware repositories right now. The Debian package is "firmware-ralink", so if someone more skilled than I can translate that to Ubuntuese it would be helpful.

[ardvark71]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

ardvark71, I guess I was wrong. I missed that one. Yes, according to the Debian docs rt2870sta supports Ralink chipsets (RT2770/RT2870, RT3070/RT3071/RT3072). They say: "This experimental vendor driver is included as a staging driver in the mainline Linux kernel since 2.6.29-rc1."

So, let's google "Ubuntu 10.04 rt2870" and see what we get.

NixCraft has a solution.
LinuxQuestions has another.
One needs the right kernel as can be seen on this Ubuntu forum post.

I does look like it's going to work.

Hi Ole....

The chipset is actually "rt2070," is that what you meant?

Regards...

[Ole Juul]

Re: Getting my USB wireless dongle to work with Kubuntu?

The chipset is actually "rt2070," is that what you meant?

Yes. It is the chipset which determines Linux compatibility, not the brand or model. The Debian driver is detailed on this page. The way I understand that page, the rt2870sta driver is compatible with the rt2070 chipset.

Last night I installed another generic unit like this with another Ralink chipset and it was just a few steps in Debian. Since (K)Ubuntu is based on Debian and can use .debs I assume that the same process will work out of the box, or at least be easily adapted. Hopefully I am right.