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I am attempting to change from Windows XP to Ubuntu on my Dell Inspiron laptop. This is a home-use laptop, and its main us is wireless internet surfing. In following recommendations found online, I have:

  1. Went to System Settings > Hardware > Additional Drivers
  2. Subsequently told to Activate "Broadcom STA wireless driver
  3. Received error message Sorry, installation of this driver failed. Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log
  4. Not knowing HOW to look at the log file, I Googled ubuntu /var/log/jockey.log
  5. Followed recommendation of Having trouble installing Bradcom STA driver
  6. Received numerous notifications of the removal and/or installation of drivers incomplete when following Step 5 from above.
  7. Still do not have wireless.

I appreciate that someone choosing to reply/answer this question might be well versed in coding and technology...but I am not. If possible, please provide an answer in a manner that a 5-year-old could understand.

I appreciate any assistance.

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user268354
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  • This will be no help to you. But I installed LXLE on a friends laptop because he had window crashes. It's a Dell1750. After installation wireless worked fine and I was able to do all the updates. He shows up today and It would not let me turn on the wireless and I got similar errors to yours. I rebooted it with the LiveUSB and it recognized my wireless network. When I restarted again on the installed version it was fine. I didn't fix the problem, it went away. So if anyone know what is needed to fix this please share. –  Apr 13 '14 at 01:43

2 Answers2

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Well I'm not too good with the under the hood stuff myself, and until someone more proficient comes along,

My suggestion is to try to update your computer with software updater, Then try to install the driver again from Additional drivers(press the windows key and write additional drivers) .

If that doesn't work and you have all your data backed up:

1) Make a bootable usb of ubuntu 12.04, if you don't have one already. http://www.ubuntu.com/download/desktop/create-a-usb-stick-on-ubuntu. You can wipe a flash drive by using the program called disks already installed on ubuntu if you have any trouble with the startup disk creator.

2) Boot from it and choose wipe everything and install ubuntu 12.04.

3) Update from software updater using ethernet cable.

4) install the driver from Additional drivers. It should work. Now you can select your wifi and enter the password when the window pops up.

Next are some steps you should take after you install Ubuntu:

1) open the software center from the bar on the left and install "ubuntu restricted extras". They're uninstalled from the beginning because they're not open source, ex. flash. So you have to have to install them yourself. They make everything work right.

2) Some aesthetic changes. Right click on your wallpaper and choose the option change desktop background. You can change the wallpaper here and if you press the tab "behavior" and change the option under auto-hide launcher, the bar on the left will hide until you bring your mouse near the left side of your screen, giving you more screen real estate. You can also change the system them on the wallpaper tab by selecting radiance in the drop down menu next to where it says system theme.

3) If you want you can installing the chrome browser, which is called "chromium" in Ubuntu from the software center.

4) You can turn the firewall on by install the program "gufw" from the software center. The firewall is off by default because all the tech savvy people like to make their own permissions for network services and because ubuntu is already ridiculously secure. You'll just be turning it on, with this program though.

5) You can also install a program called "cairo dock". This will give you a mac like launcher at the bottom of the screen, but it will make your computer slower.

user239868
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In Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers we have covered about all of the Dell Inspiron Laptops that use a Broadcom Wireless driver. There are many that have solved their driver issues there. If you can post the result of lspci -nn -d 14e4: on the terminal and then check out the Broadcom list showned in the link above you can install the correct driver for it.

There are a small group of Inspiron that might not be covered in this Broadcom list so if you happen to be one of them, please make sure to comment on which pci:id you have and which specific broadcom model that Inspiron is using (Also which Inspiron model it is) so we can added to the list.

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Luis Alvarado
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