Part 3: Debian Lenny 64bit on a Dell Precision M4300 - Intel Wireless (wifi driver and management)

Ok things got a little interesting in my initial installation of Lenny on my Dell Precision M4300. The Ubuntu experience was pretty straight forward as they included the proprietary driver whereas Debian does not. It wasn't a tragedy, thankfully. One other major difference I've found with the Ubuntu driver was the wireless LED refused to light up when toggled on. It's glowing brightly and blinking with activity under Lenny and something as aesthetic as that actually made me smile.

Earlier, during the initial Lenny installation, I saw the warning that there was a non-included firmware required to use the Intel wifi adapter but was able to skip and install it later. A simple apt-get and the firmware (driver) can be loaded. You may need to add non-free to your /etc/apt/sources.list if you haven't already. Also, I found a nice network manager over the one included with Gnome, WICD. I will walk through the process of installing the firmware and the WICD network manager below.

Open a terminal and become root

# apt-get install firmware-iwlwifi

# modprobe iwl4965

Edit /etc/apt/sources.list and append as a single line at the end:

deb http://apt.wicd.net/ debian
extras

# apt-get update

Note the NO_PUBKEY # - we need it for the next step as [NO_PUBKEY#]

# gpg --keyserver subkeys.pgp.net --recv [NO_PUBKEY#]

# gpg --export --armor [NO_PUBKEY#] apt-key add -

You may get a warning about unsafe ownership this should be ok

# apt-get update

# apt-get install wicd

Toggle your wifi switch so that it is enabled

Start WICD Network Manager from the Applications / Internet drop-down


Within a few seconds of starting WICD you should see wifi connections that are within range although you may have to twiddle through the listings. If you don't see any in range you can always click the Refresh button manually to update the list. If you select a protected wifi connection use the Advanced Settings button to enter required details for WEP/WPA/etc for each network.

Have I mentioned that I love the return of the WiFi LED on my laptop? :)