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Priyab Dash
Priyab Dash

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lubuntu wifi with wicd-curses

Currently I use Lubuntu on my Acer One laptop. Being a low power, quirky 2 in 1 Windows laptop, I had pain setting up linux on this laptop. Finally I was able to get Lubuntu installed and got it working but wifi connectivity was a big problem on this laptop. The wifi that I configured at install time, ssid only works after installation and any other wifi ssid that I configure it either connects briefly or just stops connecting. I though I was the only one suffering from this problem, but after reading many ununtu forums I get the idea that Ubuntu or even Lubuntu's network manager or the whole stack is not dependable.

After searching the internet I came across Wicd which was the most promising alternative to the default network manager in Lubuntu. But there was a problem, if I ran Wicd then Lubuntu's network manager stopped working and based on some advice should be stopped before starting wicd.

sudo service network-manager stop

Another problem with Wicd was that from its GUI even after setting the password key, using different WPA1/2 formats, it never worked and gave "Bad password" error. Having worked on ncurses based terminal wifi managers earlier I searched for such suitable options. Ubuntus network manager already has nmcli which helps to edit, wired and wifi network settings but given it still depended on Lubuntus network manager I did not explore it further. But wicd-curses was the right tool that I was searching for. With its easy interface I can not only select an ssid but also set the password and connect to all available wifi networks in my vicinity. Unlike wicd gui, wicd-curses worked like a charm from the terminal and even give the strength of the signal.

You can install wicd-curses with the below command
sudo apt wicd-curses

You can type the following command to connect.
wicd-curses

The final piece of the puzzle was the DNS access, once the wifi is connected through wifi, the DNS server access stops working and FireFox did not connect to most of the sites. As a solution I added google dns servers to /etc/resolv.conf to get the DNS working.

$ cat /etc/resolv.conf
# Generated by NetworkManager
nameserver 127.0.0.53
nameserver 8.8.8.8
nameserver 8.8.4.4

Thanks to the above setup my wifi is working fine now.

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Top comments (4)

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osde8info profile image
Clive Da •

have you tried linuxlite or xubuntu instead ?

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twitmyreview profile image
Priyab Dash •

Yes I gave them a shot but some times their images do no have ueffi boot binaries. Or their display drivers were not compatible for low power 2 in 1 laptops with 32 bit effi and 64 bit os.
My experiments are noted here:
dev.to/twitmyreview/running-linux-...

Other good alternatives:
Zorin OS Lite 15 (latest) , Elementary OS (UI very good but got sound driver issues).
Even Fedora is good, its just that I am more invested in ubuntu/debian ecosystem so I have not tried other Linux distros. And lubuntu happens to be the best distro for me now that works for me out of the box.

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osde8info profile image
Clive Da •

cool good points there is so much choice out there now

thesedays i stick with whatever OS came with the hardware and ALWAYS run virtualbox with the desktop distro of choice (xubuntu or oracle linux)

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twitmyreview profile image
Priyab Dash •

Thank you, again everyone have their own needs and choices. My need was to run linux on a low powered laptop where Window 8 OS alone had taken 95% of the space and soon after the next patches it would have been unusable. But for you I think using Virtualbox would be a better choice if you have a powerful enough laptop/system. Linux distros are a great OS to run on your old or low power PCs/mac/laptops if Windows/Apple stops supporting it or become bloat.

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