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Hi,

After playing a lot with multiple Linux distributions, I had hard time make my wireless card working. This was back to the release of Ubuntu 6.06. My wireless card was a Dell TrueMobile based on the Broadcom chip. Broadcom is known to not release chip specifications, so at that time, I had to use the just released open source driver built using clean-room reverse engineering, or rely on NdisWrapper to run the native Windows driver. I managed to make the open source driver work but it was painful: Needed to reconnect repetitively to get a “B” (11 mb/s) connection while my card could go “G” (54 mb/s).

Finally I got tired of all this… Since the Inspiron is using a mini-PCI card for the wireless card, I looked for a replacement card that was working well with Linux and found the Intel PRO/Wireless 2915ABG for less than 50$ CDN. After installation, it worked flawlessly!

If you are tired of you TrueMobile (or Broadcom based) wireless card and you want to replace it, here are the steps:...