Linksys WUSB54G in Ubuntu

Since we’re going all-wireless in my new house, I had to setup my Ubuntu machine with a wireless card. All of the slots on the computer are filled, so I grabbed a Linksys WUSB54G USB (hence the model number) adapter. Installing it required some terminal work, unusual for Ubuntu. This thread gives a somewhat cryptic outline of the steps required to get the card working and following them requires a bit of Linux experience. For the unexperienced, read on.

After plugging the card in on my Feisty machine, it came up in the network manager (System > Administration > Network) but wouldn’t connect to any networks, be they open or encrypted, G or B, nothing. So I retreated to the interwebs and found that ndiswrapper was the solution to my problems. To begin, install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9:

~$ sudo aptitude install ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

Then, download the latest driver from the Linksys site, unzip it and find the WUSB54Gv4 directory under the Drivers directory. Run ndiswrapper -v and check to make sure there aren’t any errors. Then, install the new Linksys driver.

~$ sudo ndiswrapper -i rt2500usb.inf
utils version: 1.9
driver version:        1.38
vermagic:       2.6.20-16-generic SMP mod_unload 586
~$ sudo depmod -a
~$ sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
~$ sudo ndiswrapper -m

You have to blacklist the standard kernel driver so that it won’t override the ndiswrapper driver. To do so, add the following to the end of /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist:

# WUSB54G driver
blacklist rt2570

Then, restart your machine and you should be able to configure wireless using the Gnome GUI tools.