How to enable wireless in BOSS GNU/Linux?

 Some time wireless/wi-fi is not working in BOSS GNU/Linux[or any debian based linux like ubuntu etc].  The reason

1.  The exact firmware/driver for the wireless card, what you are using is not installed.  Because your driver may not be the popular one which is used by many laptop vendor/company/product/model.

2.  Due to the license under which the firmware/driver is released.

Note: If the license of the driver allow to distribute then by default the driver is added with the Linux Operating system.  Some drivers are free but not allowed to distribute, in this case the user manually should install that driver by his own. 

In both cases you should find and install the correct firmware.  In general the following firmwares are enough for get wi-fi access. (There are some special case, where your wi-fi card not from the vendors like b43, broadcom, intel.  If it is so, you need to get the .deb file from the vendor's site or from other distro's repository.)


Install the following firmwares from the repository using terminal(with root permission),
Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

$sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer firmware-brcm80211firmware-iwlwifi firmware-linux-free

Now you can check whether these firmwares installed, by the command
$dpkg -l | grep firmware
the o/p of this command will be like the following

ii  firmware-b43-installer       4.150.10.5-4        Installer package for firmware for the b43 driver
ii  firmware-brcm80211         0.32~bpo60+1    Binary firmware for Broadcom 802.11 wireless cards
ii  firmware-iwlwifi                0.32~bpo60+1    Binary firmware for Intel Wireless 3945, 4965 and 5000-series cards
ii  firmware-linux-free            2.6.32-39            Binary firmware for various drivers in the Linux kernel

How to findout make of the wireless card:

1. After the system bootup, from termianl read the message in "/var/log/syslog" by

$sudo tail /var/log/syslog

2. $lspci

3. $lshw

4. $lsusb (if you are using wireless dongle for your PC.)

after the installation of these things in your machine(some times we need to restart) wireless thing comes into the effect.  now just click on the network icon (nm-applet) and now you can see the options like

wireless network

enable wireless

create new wireless network

connect to hidden wireless network and the menu itself shows you all the available wireless networks.

For intel wifi cards:
install firmware-iwlwifi

For broadcom lp-phy type wifi cards:
install firmware-b43-lpphy-installer