no wireless in dell inspiron 1520 with 12.04

[BlackhorsePB]

Seems to be a very popular post - worked on my (newly) installed ubuntu. Many thanks

[jerrt]

going to try this on my 1525 tonight. Glad to have such great help.

strange thing was when I originally installed 12.10 the wifi worked. after the built in update did its things the wifi didn't even show up.

*****update***** [[played to unsolved mystery theme music]]
This thread fixed my problem as well. Great help! [:

I did have to gedit /etc/modules and add the line "b43" to make it take action on reboot. Just wanted to put that out there.

[vitormiran]

Wow, thank you very much for your help. I've tried to solve this problem in my Dell Inspiron 1525 in some different ways but I couldn't manage to turn on the wireless device. I was just wondering why the solution indicated throught Ubuntu (using the Additional Drivers functionality) didn't worked. Everytime I've tried to download and install the driver using that screen, I've got this error:“Sorry, installation of this driver failed. Please have a look at the log file for details: /var/log/jockey.log.”

Thanks.
Vitor Miranda.

[Lincinas]

I was unable to fix wireless network issue for several days. But these recommendations worked like a charm! Thanks for a good post.

Regards
Linas Bartkevicius

[Implactus]

Hi Im quite new to Linux and not really a programmer.
I have installed Ubuntu 12.04 on to a fresh hard disc on a Inspiron 1501 laptop.
No matter what I do I can't seem to get the wireless network card to work and when updated the ethernet port doesn't even initialise.
I have tried to repeatedly to move the b43 file to the lib/firmware directory with the terminal commands posted above.
When I input the mv b43 lib/firmware command I get this output.
mv: cannot move `b43' to `/lib/firmware/b43': Directory not empty

Does this mean that the file already exists at this location or does it mean the hardware is not responding.
When I revert to an earlier distro I can get the Ethernet port working but on the update it doesn't see the port?
I have spent several hours trying to get the wireless working and still no joy hence this post.