Ubuntu – How to disable built-in wifi and use only USB wifi card

wireless

The built-in wifi card in my laptop (Dell XPS M1330) is crap, pretty much. I have an Asus USB wifi card which is significantly better, and it works fine. What I'd like to do is disable the built-in wifi card. Is there a way to do this (without having to boot into BIOS each time I want to disable/enable the built-in wireless)?

@mikewhatever: Here are those outputs

matt@sbod:~$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 0b05:179d ASUSTek Computer, Inc. 
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 05a9:2640 OmniVision Technologies, Inc. OV2640 Webcam
Bus 007 Device 002: ID 0483:2016 SGS Thomson Microelectronics Fingerprint Reader
matt@sbod:~$ lspci -nnk | grep -iA2 net
09:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5906M Fast Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1713] (rev 02)
    Subsystem: Dell XPS M1330 [1028:0209]
    Kernel driver in use: tg3
--
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
    Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN Mini-Card [1028:000b]
    Kernel driver in use: wl

Best Answer

Add the following line to /etc/network/interfaces:

iface wlan0 inet manual

NetworManager doesn't manage interfaces configured in the interfaces file. Replace wlan0 with the interface you want to disable, if it's not the name of the built-in interface.

Then restart network manager

sudo service network-manager restart

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