Ubuntu 12.10 HP Pavilion dm4 wireless not working

I have a HP Pavilion dm4 that initially came with Windows 7. I upgraded to Windows 8 and then replaced that with Ubuntu 12.10. The WiFi worked fine until I installed the software upgrades right after installing the os. There is a hardware switch for WiFi and Bluetooth and it is on.

rfkill list all results:

2: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
3: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

In the Network settings, I only see Wired and Network Proxy, no wireless. I am currently connected to a wired network to resolve this issue.

2 Answers

By typing the command :

lspci

You can check what kind of wireless card your HP pavillon have. I guess it's probably something like bcm43xx.

If so, the answer to get your wifi working is :

sudo apt-get install linux linux-headers-generic kernel-package
sudo apt-get purge b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-lpphy-installer firmware-b43legacy-installer bcmwl*
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-lpphy-installer bcmwl*

Reboot !

From this post on askubuntu.com

Connect to the internet by some other way and install the 4.8+ kernel

sudo apt update
sudo apt install linux-generic-hwe-16.04

You also need firmware for this device. Update your system by

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

and the firmware will be installed.

Reboot and the wireless device should work.

To get it working out of the box, you need to install Ubuntu 16.04.2+ that has support of this device.

(I used a USB Ethernet connector for internet access. )

The updates would take a while to get done.