Dell Inspiron 1420, Ubuntu and Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card

I had previously posted about my adventures with installing Ubuntu on this old Dell laptop.  Even though I could get the wireless to connect with the open source drivers included with Ubuntu 12.04, I have always had difficulty getting the connection to persist, especially after a reboot.

First I thought it was the network manager, made changes and eventually went back to the original.  I put up with it for awhile but again went searching for a better answer.

There is a proprietary driver for the Dell Wireless 1395 WLAN mini-card (which is actually a Broadcom BCM 4312 under the hood) provided by the manufacturer here.

Also, more information about detecting and installing alternate drivers provided in the Ubuntu documentation is worth reading:  Identifying Your Broadcom BCM43xx Chipset (PCI)

The easy answer that I discovered was:

• Go to System Settings and select Additional Drivers
• Give it a few minutes to detect your hardware
• Activate the STA wireless driver

Important to note: you need to be plugged in with your Ethernet port to access the Internet. Changing the wireless drivers will disconnect your WiFi and of course will be unable to download anything.  That might be overstating the obvious, but hey, just wanted to mention it.