wireless broken; Mint 15; Sony Vaio Pro 13

[ooddiittyy]

Caveat: I know nothing (Jon Snow) about Linux, other than very minimal exposure to both Mint and Ubuntu on desktop systems.

Just got the new Sony Vaio Pro 13 and, due to an underabundance of forethought wiped Windows and installed Mint 15. Wireless, I am now aware after browsing a number of forums, doesn't seem to be playing nice with the newer hardware.

Does anyone have any n00b-friendly advice that might help? I would greatly appreciate it. Worst-case I can always reinstall Windows, but I think we're all aware of how worst of a case that would be.

[TBABill]

First step is to find out what wireless device you have in the computer (as Linux Mint sees it). Could you open a terminal and type in

Code: Select all

lspci -nn

and type or paste back here in your response whatever info that command returns in the terminal? From there we can figure out what is needed, but be aware we may need more info before knowing what to tell you so it may not be a simple one answer fix.

[ooddiittyy]

First step is to find out what wireless device you have in the computer (as Linux Mint sees it). Could you open a terminal and type in

Code: Select all

lspci -nn

and type or paste back here in your response whatever info that command returns in the terminal? From there we can figure out what is needed, but be aware we may need more info before knowing what to tell you so it may not be a simple one answer fix.

First, thanks so much for the quick response! I'm going to be a little selective intially, because it's quite a few lines and since the laptop isn't connected to the internet I've gotta hand-transcribe it. The network controller info is as follows:

01:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:08b1] (rev 6b)

If you need any more than that, I'll copy everything into a text file and usb it to my desktop. Thank you again.

[ooddiittyy]

A little bit of [url=http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=Zbk4Bvic5jA#t=7s]Googling[/url] later and it seems like this is a heavier issue than I was hoping; if anyone can help me follow in the footsteps of this dude https://spicious.com/sony-vaio-pro-11-with-ubuntu.html it might work but perhaps it's just over my head for the moment.

Appreciate any further insight.

[TBABill]

Ok so you need a newer kernel to support the card. Should be plenty of guides online for how to install a newer kernel.

[ooddiittyy]

Ok so you need a newer kernel to support the card. Should be plenty of guides online for how to install a newer kernel.

Okay, great, I'll look into that. My concern when considering that was that if I have to pull the kernel through the terminal in Linux, obviously I'm not going to be able to do it from any servers online since I don't have wireless access. Is there a relatively straightforward way of installing a newer kernel that I could manage without internet, i.e. copy the kernel file to a usb and transfer it over to the laptop?

Thanks so much, and sorry for the basic questions.

[rokytnji]

One way to to download Linux headers and images to a pendrive on another computer with net access.

Then transfer them over to you box into the /home/<your user name>

Then open a terminal and do

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg -i <kernel name goes here>

You can use the tab key for auto-complete instead of typing out the whole kernel name to avoid mistakes. I usually start with the header first and then the image second.
A example of me installing a new .deb kernel below.

http://antix.freeforums.org/post24642.html#p24642

I am just showing you the command line way. You can also probably just left double click on the header and image files and gdebi will install it also. I just like using command line to stay in practice.
[url=http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/]Here are Ubuntu kernel .deb files[/url].

I don't know where you can find the mint ones though. Maybe after installing a 3.9 or 3.10 ubuntu kernel and you get online. You can use a[url=http://liquorix.net/]Liqourix kernel[/url] which I have also used to bail me out when kernel issues have given me no net or sound or what ever kernel issues arise.

[ooddiittyy]

One way to to download Linux headers and images to a pendrive on another computer with net access.

Then transfer them over to you box into the /home/<your user name>

Then open a terminal and do

Code: Select all

sudo dpkg -i <kernel name goes here>

You can use the tab key for auto-complete instead of typing out the whole kernel name to avoid mistakes. I usually start with the header first and then the image second.
A example of me installing a new .deb kernel below.

http://antix.freeforums.org/post24642.html#p24642

I am just showing you the command line way. You can also probably just left double click on the header and image files and gdebi will install it also. I just like using command line to stay in practice.
[url=http://kernel.ubuntu.com/~kernel-ppa/mainline/]Here are Ubuntu kernel .deb files[/url].

I don't know where you can find the mint ones though. Maybe after installing a 3.9 or 3.10 ubuntu kernel and you get online. You can use a[url=http://liquorix.net/]Liqourix kernel[/url] which I have also used to bail me out when kernel issues have given me no net or sound or what ever kernel issues arise.

Many, many thanks rokytnji. I'll dig into this as soon as I get off work. Much appreciated.

[ooddiittyy]

Brief update for those in similar situations: my impressions after fiddling with this for a couple of days are: it's really difficult (or presently, impossible) to get a dual-booted Linux/Win8 installation in UEFI mode on this laptop; the one dude I referenced earlier succeeded using legacy boot settings, but that just seems like too big a pain to be worthwhile currently. Basically, no distro of Linux that I've tried has been able to install properly in UEFI mode alongside Windows 8; either they won't boot, or Windows won't.

Thanks for the responses all the same, though. Here's hoping the software is updated by people who actually know what they're doing to support the new hardware.