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Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

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How to figure out the exact driver needed for the WiFi card to install it on Linux? (lemm.ee)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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I apologize if this seems like a trivial matter, but I have a laptop (a Lenovo Ideapad 3 to be exact) and I can't get WiFi (or Bluetooth) to work on anything other than Ubuntu 23.04 and its flavors. I tried OpenSUSE Leap and Debian 12, both couldn't detect the built-in WiFi card. I also tried Ubuntu-based distros such as Linux Mint, KDE Neon, and Zorin OS, same problem. I tried Kubuntu 22.04 LTS and even that couldn't detect the WiFi card! So for the mean time, I'm stuck with using Ubuntu 23.04. Any ideas to get around this? Can I use Ubuntu to figure the exact WiFi card that's being used then download its driver? If so, how can I do that exactly? Note that my Laptop doesn't have a built-in Ethernet port, and I don't want to buy a USB Ethernet adapter only for it not work out of the box either! Any help would be appreciated!

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

You could also check the symlinks for the device in the sysfs. The word after "drivers" below for a given network interface (eth0 below) is usually the name of the driver (cpsw below):

$ ls -l /sys/class/net/eth0/device/driver   
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 0 Aug  9 10:41 /sys/class/net/eth0/device/driver -> ../../../../bus/platform/drivers/cpsw

Or run lsmod and see if anything jumps out.

Either way, once you find the driver name, run modinfo to get version and other information about specific drivers.

Edit: formatting