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I just installed Ubuntu on Dell Mini that I had laying around, and the install went perfectly fine except for the fact that I cannot connect to my wireless internet.

When I click the network button in the top bar it doesn't display any networks to connect to. All it show is:

Ethernet Network and disconnected (both grayed out)
VPN Connections, 
Enable Networking (Enabled), 
Connection Information (Grayed Out)
Edit connections

I've tried to fix it but I can't seem to figure out what is wrong. I might be missing something obvious because I'm new to Linux.

If anyone could help that would be great. Thanks.

Edit: I am running a dell mini with these specs: Processor: intel Atom CPU N450 @ 1.66GHz x 2 Graphics: Intel IGD OS-type: 64-bit

With Ubuntu version: 13.04

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Could you please provide us with some more information? What version of Ubuntu are you running? Which Dell Mini do you have? –  MadMike Oct 8 '13 at 4:47
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1 Answer

try typing this in the terminal
lspci -vvvnn | grep -A10 -i wireless
Then look at the output and there should be a line that mentions "kernel driver in use" and then some word like ath9k_htc or something. Then still in the terminal type in
sudo modprobe <kernel driver> where you don't write the angle brackets and you instead input the name of that kernel driver like sudo modrpobe ath9k_htc
If the output of the first command is blank, just try typing in lspci -vvvnn and looking through that for a mention of wireless and find the kernel driver listed underneath that and sudo modprobe that driver

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I did exactly what you said but when I did sudo modprobe b43-pci-bridge it responded with: FATAL: Module b43-pci-bridge not found. –  Johnathan Oct 9 '13 at 3:35
It may not have been compiled into your kernel for some reason =( that seems odd. do a grep -i b43_pci_bridge /boot/config-3.8.0-31-generic but tab complete that config file to find the latest one in your /boot folder. This may require some more work if it is not there, but there may be a way to get it as a module... dunno –  Jacob Minshall Oct 9 '13 at 8:20
I did that and it responded with: /boot/config-3.8.0-generic: No such file or directory –  Johnathan Oct 10 '13 at 3:32
that's not supposed to be the exact name of your file in /boot Try doing an ls /boot/ and look for the file that says config with the latest numbers on it. –  Jacob Minshall Oct 11 '13 at 19:40
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