Wireless adapter not recognised in Zorin OS 8 Ultimate 64 bit?

Afternoon, all.

I'm a Windows XP refugee, who's just moved over to Linux; specifically Zorin, the Ultimate 64-bit OS 8. Brilliant OS...

Now, I've got a bit of a problem with my nano TP-Link wireless adapter. I have an elderly Compaq Presario desktop, an SR1619UK (or an EK-335AA, for those who like to be specific!) circa 2004 vintage, running an AMD Athlon64 @ 2.0 GHz, 3 Gb of RAM, and a WD 160 Gb HDD.

I normally use Ethernet, which works fine. I have an even older Dell Inspiron 1100 laptop, on which I've just installed Lubuntu. For reasons I won't go into, I can't use the wireless adapter on the laptop, so instead I use the Ethernet...and that's when I use the TP-Link TL-WN725N nano adapter on the Compaq.

This is where it gets odd; I tried Ubuntu to start with, and was using that for about a month. Didn't really like the Unity desktop, though, so two days ago, I installed Zorin instead. The adapter worked perfectly in Ubuntu, yet Zorin doesn't even recognise it...but it's based on Ubuntu anyway.

Does anybody have any ideas why Zorin won't recognise my adapter? Any suggestions would be welcome; I'm more than a wee bit perplexed here! :confused

Thanks.

Mike.

 

Although I don't do much with Linux, I know from my experience in retail that Linux drivers are iffy at best. As you've discovered, a Linux driver that works fine with Linux "A" and "B" may not work with Linux "C."

I don't know how much you have invested in your current Wi-Fi card; however the easiest solution would be to dig deep into user reviews on sites like Amazon and Newegg to see if there is a make/model other people have successfully used with Zorin.

 

Hi!

I thought that might be the case. From my limited experience with Linux so far, I understand that although most of the distros share a common 'functional' kernel that will run the basic O/S, they all customise the rest of the set-up to a greater or lesser degree with their own 'flavour' of tweaks...

Sound about right to you?

I've joined the Zorin Group Forum; they've already helped me with a couple of issues, but of course the beauty of Linux is there is such an enormous user community, and lots of different forums to help you. I felt it might be advantageous to post in a few different ones, as wireless networking appears to be a bit of a 'sticky' issue with many of them..!

Many thanks for your suggestion, and I will indeed follow it up. I only paid £10 UK for the adapter (about $16 US), so I haven't laid out an enormous amount. I'm just a bit surprised it didn't work, as it worked fine with XP, and then both Ubuntu AND Linux Mint, before I tried Zorin. I REALLY like Zorin, and would like to stay with it, as it does everything I require from an O/S, including the huge amount of software included with the Ultimate 64-bit Edition...

Cheers!

Mike.

 

A related (or unrelated) question. Did you pay for the Ultimate Edition of Zorin and how much?

I tried a couple of 32-bit Zorin versions on my Dell precision M70 (made circa late 2005) and liked the first one but not the second, And, after I had wiped the HDD and re-installed that first version it never worked right. So, I abandoned Zorin. I'm still running XP Pro with the POSReady Registy entry on one drive and Vista Ultimate on the other HDD.