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I have got an Acer Aspire One netbook and I am after a wireless card that actually works well with ubuntu. The original card was flaky and disconnecting intermittently and so I replaced it with an Intel Wireless WiFi 5100AGN. Again I have had driver problems with this card, I am stuck running WEP with me providing the IP address etc.. It will not work with WPA at all. It's a strange one as the card works fine on other wireless networks and other devices work fine on my wireless network (Buffalo WHR-G54S running tomato firmware). In both cases the wireless cards are reported to be supported by Ubuntu.

Anyway, can anyone recommend the any wireless cards or chipsets that are most compatible with Ubuntu and a range of wireless access points?

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    If it works on other wireless networks, it is very much possible that the network, not the card, is at fault.
    – Oxwivi
    May 16, 2011 at 11:12
  • I think it is the combination, as plenty of laptops and smart phones have worked fine on my network :(, but it is cheaper to replace the wireless card than the access point. It might be worth trying a change in the OS of the access point
    – Daniel Brewer
    May 16, 2011 at 13:29
  • Mess with AP and make a new network before considering replacing anything.
    – Oxwivi
    May 16, 2011 at 15:22
  • 4
    I'm voting to close this question as off-topic because this is a hardware recommendation question.
    – Pilot6
    Oct 2, 2015 at 8:58

5 Answers 5

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You can find most of the compatible ones here: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Devices/PCI it includes PCI ones, USB ones and the Mini PCI-E you want to look for.

Remember that about 99% of the compatibility comes from the Kernel and not the Distro. Most distro will include some wireless cards and maybe the 3rd party drivers but if you want to look to be sure I recommend you check first what Kernel version the distro you want is using. Since you are here i will assume we are talking about Ubuntu 11.04 which has the 2.6.38 Kernel version. The amount of network drivers can be found here: http://kernelnewbies.org/Linux26Changes for each kernel version. since networking is one of the key features of Linux and is one of the most worked one you have a very high chance that buying a known wireless card will work out of the box (When i say known i mean something like RaLink, Broadcom, etc.. instead of some weird company card like "Chicken Little Wireless Card French Fries Edition"

Also I already installed 3 Acer Aspire One and they work 100%. So maybe it is a hardware problem which also Linux can tell you via several commands (Like dmesg for example).

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The Ubuntu Certification Catalog has a section on network devices:

Unfortunately all network devices are lumped into one category, so it's hard to tell exactly which are mini PCIe cards.

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most common ,and cheap, and mostly wide spread is Atheross, but in linux, and ubuntu as flavour of linux,all,really all kind of networking device work,work even better then in windows(tm)..as most servers are not on windows,true? so,they like to comunicate,and that is reason why,support for all kind of devices is so good,in linux,and that means for ubuntu too... really ,will be hard to find device which will not work out of box..but if that happend,there is way to add driver from internet, even if u think or for some reason you insist to use windows driver for your device ,even that You can!...and that is simple,so simple that even without guide newbie can do,but to make you more happy even there is plenty of guide on net for that... on end,ubuntu is for humans..and will give you plenty choices,and sure will not leave you without support. Thanks for asking this question.

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i can recommend to you Atheross wireless cards in general for laptops,whatever mini pci or else. so look for atheross chipset to be at least inside of mini pci,as u look for laptops. Same if u were asking for desktop,i will recommend to you D-Link equipment.. as those Atheross and D-Link allmost as rule,work out of box! Buntu2U2

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  • Why do you write two answers instead of one?
    – N.N.
    Aug 26, 2011 at 6:56
  • maybe have something with ubuntu and Logitech G700 mouse ,seems mouse send two times same post on one click(maybe have something as that particular mouse is recognized both as mouse and keyboard)..not only here,and not my fault..seems its solved as now have dedicated driver in Ubuntu..
    – siniša
    Mar 2, 2015 at 14:52
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I have Acer Aspire One for daily use, and yes its Wifi works perfectly without issues. It has Broadcom 4313 Wifi card. It should be b/g/n card.

Well but the max link speed reported is 72Mbit and real transfer (iperf) is under 50Mbit mostly.. I think it just could be better if I buy better (better supported, with better driver?) card, and they go for few $..

Intention is to get some of 802.11n speeds in real, just to have more comfortable use of file sharing than 10 or even 6 MB/s or so.. My home server can push 100MB/s via NFS (over gigabit lan), and my wifi gives around 130Mbit to other clients, e.g. my old weak eepc wifi (but it is miniPCI).

So it seems to be easy.. For the moment I can purchase Intel Centrino Wireless-N 2230 at the local shop.. But a quick google search found some reports of troubles, so I stopped ordering and start searching. I know that those mini antenna U.FL plugs are not designed for many attempts (some could have as low as 5 plug-unplug cycle life), so this is not a good place for trying.. While typing here, I placed ebay order on AR9287. We will see.

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