HP DV5000 and Ubuntu 12.04 Wireless card issues solved!

If you have the old HP DV5000 laptop, you know that it’s a great little machine.  Mine is about 6 years old now and still chugging along.  I recently decided to move over to Ubuntu 12.04 from Windows XP because XP is just so slow on this system.

The install of Ubuntu 12.04 on the HP DV5000 was a breeze, and the screen clarity is stunning.  While it’s taking a bit of time to get used to the new desktop model of Ubuntu, I am enjoying the challenge.

I am a software engineer, but have not done deep linux development since college and my first couple of years in the industry so it has been a while since I have spent serious time with the Penguin.

Broadcom b43 Wireless card not recognized.

So far, the only problem I have encountered with Ubuntu 12.04 was with the Wireless card.  The HP DV5000 uses a Broadcom 43xx series wireless network card which requires proprietary drivers that are not installed with Ubuntu.  This results in the wireless card being unusable.  A laptop is not much fun if it has to be tethered to an Ethernet cable.

Installing the drivers for the Broadcom b43 Wireless card

Fortunately, the solution to this problem is extremely simple:

  1. Open a terminal window: CTRL-ALT-T
  2. Enter:sudo apt-get install linux-firmware-nonfree
  3. At this point, my wireless card popped right on a detected my network.  All I had to do was enter the security credentials and I was connected.

That’s it.  Good luck with moving to Ubuntu Linux.  It’s nice to be back in the fold.