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I'll be honest here, I'm pretty new to Ubuntu and Linux here with my only experience being minor to moderate Command Line usage in Windows (it's REALLY not as scary as many make it out to be) and the Linux file system of Android phones, so please explain each step for me like you would any new user?

I'm running a near fresh install, days old of Ubuntu 15.10, due to hardware issues preventing me from using Windows. What's relevant here is that I was trying to locate the drivers I'd need to build for my wireless USB adapter (RTL8811AU if it matters) but after building realized an earilier concern was in the way.

That is, initally upon install the network manager service was working fine, telling me I had an ethernet connection where what I wanted was a wireless one; but upon preforming initial updates I no longer saw the network indicator and kept getting a "Network services are not compatible with this version" message. I still had ethernet internet connection though despite numerous reboots, so I went hunting for the info. All of them, however, were for 12.x and 14.x Ubuntu versions, I went with the 14.x guides here for best chance at similarity:

https://askubuntu.com/a/727462/526146

Obviously since I'm here now, this was a bad idea. Ubuntu 15.10 is still running fine, just with zero access to the internet. I have the LiveUSB I used to install it on hand still, same Ubuntu 15.10 minus any post install updates. Any idea how I could repair my network manager packages using it?

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I don't think you can do from live USB but you can try wired connection to install network drivers.

In Linux, most drivers (the ones that are open source) come with the kernel; so the packages that contains the driver are

linux-image-generic

and (possibly)

linux-firmware

(1).

You can check if it is up-to-date with

apt-cache policy linux-image-generic

apt-cache policy linux-firmware

and updates should be automatic --- if not, the classical old sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade should work.

Notice that sometime there is a problem in upgrades that makes that the old kernel is retained; in that case use

apt-get install linux-generic

to update the kernel/firmware to the last available for your distribution.

If the device has a not open-source or a driver which is not in the official kernel, things are different, and are very device-dependent.

Footnotes:

(1) normal kernels. change

-generic

with

-rt

or

-lowlatency

if you have some fancy (audio workstation, real time) configuration.

Source : How to I update Ralink 5390 adapter driver via terminal?

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  • Unfortunately the problem with the network manager service means I have no internet connection on the Linux/Ubuntu machine. I'm currently asking this from my phone, it's been cabled in with ethernet (wired connection) from the get go and I was trying to get wireless working. So, sadly anything that requires an internet connection on there won't work e.g. apt-get. Trust me I tried. In a few days I can try seeing if USB Tethering through my phone's hotspot will work, but more out of trying every option since I doubt it will work. Apr 4, 2016 at 0:30

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