The install on the netbook went fine. I installed the "restricted" driver for the Broadcomm wireless card just as I had done previously with Ubuntu. I configured the wireless connection under networking by supplying the SSID (which is not broadcast) and password from my wireless router. I set the connection to WPA2 personal as the router is WPA2. The issues I have noticed are:
1 - the wireless connection does not connect
2 - WPA2 personal reverts to WPA personal
I changed the router to WPA and still no connection.
I installed Ubuntu 12.04 (from which Mint 13 is derived I think?) and allowed it to install the restricted driver. I configured the network connection to my wireless router and it works fine.
The driver package is bcmwl-kernel-source_5.100.82.38+bdcom-0ubuntu6.1_i386.deb in both cases. The files are identical on Ubuntu and Mint Mate.
I uninstalled and reinstalled the driver but Mint still does not connect. It still reverts WPA2 to WPA.
I noticed that in Ubuntu I had to add a new connection for wireless. Mint seems to know that there is a wireless device and I am only allow to change its properties. I changed Mint to "roaming" mode but that simply cleared the properties and I could not edit anything.
I am at the moment installing Mint 13 Cinnamon and will report what I find. I will then try some brute force investigation which I used to find a network bug in the CentOS (Red Hat) 6 installer.
In the mean time I would appreciate any advice.
TIA,
Ken
Update 1 - I installed Mint 13 Cinnamon and configured the wireless network via the Network app from the menu. It did NOT work. I then opened a networking dialog from the icon in the notification bar and pointed that to the wireless network configuration previously created. It DID work So now I am restoring my Mate backup to the netbook. The network configuration screens are much different but I will see if there is a dialog which can be raised from the network notification icon and see what I can do there. I will update when I have more info.
Update 2 - I was able to create a wireless connection from a dialog launched from the network notification icon. But it does not work. I rebooted and upon examining syslog I found the following line
/etc/network/interfaces showsMay 31 10:21:21 taylor13 NetworkManager[443]: nm-ifupdown-connection.c.100 - invalid connection read from /etc/network/interfaces: (1) proto
Let me try and compare this with what I had in Mint Cinnamon - but it will take a while as I need to reinstall. I need a couple of these machinesauto lo
iface lo inet loopback
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-psk (a long key)
wpa-driver wext
wpa-key-mgmt WPA-PSK
wpa-proto WPA2
wpa-ssid (the correct name of my router)
auto wlan0
Update 2a - I deleted the offending lines from /etc/network/interfaces and rebooted. I do NOT get the error in syslog. Nor do I get a wireless connection. I deleted and recreated the wireless entity using the dialog from the network notifier. NO information was written to /etc/network/interfaces. But still no wireless connection. It looks like the offending entry was created by mate-network-admin. I guess I need to file a bug against that program.