Because Lenny detected my wifi card (Linksys WPC11 v.4) right away, I’ve had no real trouble using it. However, that’s from the commandline. In order to make it work from the GUI, it requires a little tweaking.
In the file /etc/network/interfaces you would normally find something like this for the wired ethernet:
# The primary network interface
allow-hotplug eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
Adding a hot-plugable wifi card requires merely duplicating that entry with minor changes:
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
You may need to substitute something else for “wlan0” if your system reads the wifi card differently. Try running as root on the commandline ifconfig to see what it calls the thing. Once you get this edited, you’ll need to run this command:
/etc/init.d/networking restart
This should allow the GUI tool for network management to show any wifi nodes in your area. Most of the time, that’s the icon in the upper toolbar notice area showing two computers. Right-click on it, make sure the “Enable Wireless” is checked. Then left-click and you should see a list of nodes. Click on the node you want to use; if it requires a key of any kind, a prompt will ask.
If you haven’t already created your personal security keyring, do that first. Otherwise you can’t save that wifi key for later use. You’ll have to enter it manually every time.
