Ubuntu – Wireless not working on Toshiba Satellite C55-A5281

13.0464-bitdriverstoshibawireless

The wireless doesn't work on my Toshiba Satellite C55-A5281. The device originally came with Windows 8, but I removed it snd installed Ubuntu. Wireless does not work "out of the box" and there are no proprietary drivers to enable in the manager. Wired connection however does work, along with the keyboards and it's functions-brightness, sound, etc. I posted about this in the forum last-week, but no other people were able to help. http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2168927

Best Answer

If this is your device, it is covered by the very new driver rtl8188ee:

Network controller [0280]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. Device [10ec:8179]

Verify your device with the terminal command:

lspci -nn

If so, you can compile this driver in 13.04. Please get a temporary wired ethernet connection and do:

sudo apt-get install linux-headers-generic build-essential

I suggest you download this to your desktop: http://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/projects/backports/stable/v3.11-rc3/backports-3.11-rc3-1.tar.bz2 Right-click it and select 'Extract Here.' Now open a terminal and do:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.11-rc3-1/
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

Your wireless should now be working. You will have compiled the driver for your currently running kernel only. When Update Manager installs a later linux-image, after reboot, re-compile:

cd ~/Desktop/backports-3.11-rc3-1/
make clean
make defconfig-rtlwifi
make
sudo make install
sudo modprobe rtl8188ee

If the message logs say you need firmware:

dmesg | grep rtl

Download and install it with: 

wget http://mirror.pnl.gov/ubuntu//pool/main/l/linux-firmware/linux-firmware_1.106_all.deb
sudo dpkg -i linux*.deb 
sudo modprobe -r rtl8188ee && sudo modprobe rtl8188ee
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