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I need to update my Ralink 5390 adapter driver and I don't know what the terminal command is. I've searched all over the net for it and I have found nothing. My wifi driver needs to be updated badly so I would like to update that first. It is a Ralink 5390 adapter on a Compaq Presario CQ57 Laptop. Any help is appreciated, Thanks. I am currently running Ubuntu 14.04

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  • On the first line (and title) you say that you need to update all drivers. Then you say you need to update your wifi driver. Please be consistent. Also, why do you need to update your wifi driver? Are you having problems? Perhaps it would be better to post the problem instead (in a new question).
    – user308164
    Sep 15, 2014 at 5:10
  • Are you running 12.04 or 14.04 (or something else)? Please add this information to your question
    – Sylvain Pineau
    Sep 15, 2014 at 7:06
  • Luchonacho- I am having slow connection. For example I was sitting about a ½ meter away from the router and I was getting a slow connection and timing out while loading pages
    – user306586
    Sep 15, 2014 at 22:27
  • Linux (and OS X) include drivers in the kernel. Your kernel gets updated automatically. So long as you're running system updates as per normal, your drivers are all up to date.
    – amanthethy
    Sep 15, 2014 at 23:50
  • @luchonacho: They were not being inconsistent. They said they need to update all their drivers, but they said that they need to update their wifi driver first. It was an ordinal, not a comparative, statement.
    – SarahofGaia
    Apr 4, 2016 at 16:24

2 Answers 2

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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.

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Usually to upgrade your software and drivers on your system, the general method followed is 

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get upgrade

Comment down if the problem still exists.

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