How do I detect and install a Wifi adapter in Debian?

Question

I've recently imaged a laptop with a Debian 5.0, and it doesn't appear to be detecting the wifi adapter. The image was originally from a different laptop, so maybe this is part of the problem.

How do I install the drivers for the card? Furthermore, I'm not even sure what the adapter model is (all I know is that the previous Windows XP install used Intel wifi drivers), so is there a way to find out the chipset model number? Also to make matters worse, there's no model number on the case - other than "Phillips Freevents".

Answer 1

to know what driver to look for here is a simple way:
if the card is pci run "lspci" in a shell and look for the closest thing
in case the card is usb run "lsusb"
if you dont know what to look for, post the result of the command here

Answer 2

Do you have any network access? Usually the any built-in LAN adapter should work fine.

If you get that working it should be rather simple to "apt-get update" and install the stock kernel and wifi firmware (often missing) shipped with Debian 5.0.

But schwert is right, in any case you need to figure out what kind of make/model your card is. Also, it might be easier to simply reinstall the laptop. And unless you really know Debian you might be better off installing Ubuntu on it. They ship wifi firmware and have quite helpful HW guides should anything go wrong.

Answer 3

There are far too many possibilities to cover in a simple answer here. I would suggest you start by reading http://wiki.debian.org/WiFi