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First let me say that I have been using Ubuntu for about 2 years now and have developed a loyalty to this OS! However, this is my first time posting a question...

I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 3135 laptop a couple of days ago, and I successfully got Ubuntu 12.04 LTS loaded to the device. Almost everything works perfectly - the only issue I have is my wireless capability (And touchscreen interface, but I can live without that for now). I have no problem connecting via Bluetooth to devices in my home. However, in order to access the internet I have to physically connect an Ethernet cable.

Things I’ve tried to no avail:

  • Downloading the proprietary driver from the Dell website and installed it via the Wireless Network Drivers application (Dell's driver only supports Win 8.1, what a shock there)

  • Re-installing Ubuntu (Don't know what I thought that would do)

If ANYONE has experience with this issue, slash can help me out here at all, your help would be much appreciated. Thanks for your time, and Peace & Love from Baltimore.

-Liam

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  • Please edit your question to add details of your wireless card from the terminal command: lspci -nn | grep 0280
    – chili555
    Feb 9, 2014 at 14:00

2 Answers 2

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Sometimes WiFi will stop working almost for no reason. Seems that little antenna key (near Backspace) does something (with, or perhaps without, the Fn modifier key). The last time I resorted to using it was at a BIOS prompt, early during the boot.

WiFi for the Inspiron 3135 does work under Debian Jessie. Well, mine does. I did the upgrade from wheezy to gain support for the newer hardware; I don't remember WiFi working on this laptop under wheezy.

$ dmesg

4: Linux version 3.14-2-amd64 ([email protected]) (gcc version 4.8.3 (Debian 4.8.3-5) ) #1 SMP Debian 3.14.13-2 (2014-07-24)
29: DMI: Dell Inc. Inspiron 3135/001GW6, BIOS A02 01/03/2014
827: ath: phy0: WB335 1-ANT card detected
828: ath: phy0: Set BT/WLAN RX diversity capability
829: ath: phy0: Enable LNA combining
830: ath: phy0: ASPM enabled: 0x42
831: ath: EEPROM regdomain: 0x60
832: ath: EEPROM indicates we should expect a direct regpair map
833: ath: Country alpha2 being used: 00
834: ath: Regpair used: 0x60
835: usbcore: registered new interface driver btusb
836: ieee80211 phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'minstrel_ht'
837: ieee80211 phy0: Atheros AR9565 Rev:1 mem=0xffffc90004880000, irq=32

$ ls /var/lib/dpkg/info/*list | egrep irmwa

/var/lib/dpkg/info/firmware-linux-free.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/firmware-linux-nonfree.list
/var/lib/dpkg/info/firmware-realtek.list

One or more of those may be required; they are present on my system.

$ ls -la /sys/class/net/ | egrep wlan0

lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 0 Aug  7 09:38 wlan0 -> ../../devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:02.3/0000:05:00.0/net/wlan0

$ cat /proc/cpuinfo | head -5

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 22
model           : 0
model name      : AMD A6-1450 APU with Radeon(TM) HD Graphics

$ lspci -nn | grep 0280

05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Qualcomm Atheros QCA9565 / AR9565 Wireless Network Adapter [168c:0036] (rev 01)

$ sudo iwlist wlan0 scanning

wlan0     Scan completed :
          Cell 01 - Address: 00:45:C3:AB:CD:EF (invented sample data)
(typical iwlist report here)

So, yeah, this WiFi hardware is supported in Linux.

The touchscreen works as well as I'd expected, with few glitches, although I don't know how to get a right-click out of it. I'd say it is very useful, but does not take the place of an external USB mouse (I don't use the factory, integrated trackpad found below the spacebar).

With /etc/X11/xdm/Xservers specifying '-dpi 144':

:0 local /usr/bin/X :0 vt7 -dpi 144 -nolisten tcp

.. I find it fairly easy to use the touchscreen (no doubt it wastes valuable screen real-estate to do it that way).

host:/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d$ cat 92-touchscreen.conf

   # touchscreen device
    Section "InputClass"
      Identifier "ELAN Touchscreen"
      MatchIsTouchpad "on"
      MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    EndSection

$ cat 91-b-custom-mouse.conf

# remaps buttons on external USB trackball
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier  "Mouse Button  Layout"
        MatchProduct  "Logitech USB Trackball"
        MatchIsPointer  "on"
        MatchDevicePath      "/dev/input/event*"
        Driver  "evdev"
        Option      "SendCoreEvents" "true"
        Option      "Buttons" "9"
        Option      "ButtonMapping" "1 0 3 0 0 0 0 2 7"
        Option      "EmulateWheel" "true"
        Option      "EmulateWheelButton" "7"
        Option      "YAxisMapping" "4 5"
        Option      "XAxisMapping" "6 7"
EndSection

The ButtonMapping part seems essential. The rest is probably imitative of others' work; I don't remember.

$ cat 91-c-custom-mouse.conf

# disable TouchPad found below the spacebar
Section "InputClass"
        Identifier  "Internal TrackPad"
        MatchProduct  "SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad"
        MatchDevicePath      "/dev/input/event*"
        Option      "Ignore" "true"
EndSection
0

Ubuntu 13.10 should have working wireless because I have Linux Mint 16 loaded live (based on 13.10) and wireless works. Could you help me by telling me if you loaded Ubuntu beside Windows 8? I want to have a dual boot setup, but I don't know for sure how to shrink the largest partition. If I change the flag from msftdata to lvm, I can resize it. Can I just switch the flag back afterwards?

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  • For switching partitions, i've always used Partition Magic, it's a live OS you can boot to from USB. But in my situation, there is only one OS on my system. I wiped Windows 8 in favor of Ubuntu 12.04. Still having this issue though.
    – LiamYesko
    Jul 24, 2014 at 2:04

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