I'm posting this question on a few different forums hoping to get an answer because I can't seem to figure it out. You all at GOG are pretty tech savvy so maybe I'll find the answer here.

I just updated to Ubuntu 12.04 and now my network card won't work. I use ndiswrapper, and ndiswrapper -l says that I have the driver installed and the hardware is present, but modprobe ndiswrapper returns "FATAL: No module detected". None of the solutions online are working.

What kinda card is it? In 2012, is should be extremely rare to need to use ndiswrapper.

Usually, I find it best to go with the shell prompt utilitiesf to do diagnositc on the router, firewall and network in general ("ifconfig", "ip", "netstat", "route", "iptables", etc).

Hahahaha, not really a solution, but I can feel your pain :D

Honestly, this is why I no longer use Ubuntu, too much of this sort of crap.

Are you using a proprietary driver or the open source version? IIRC Ubuntu defaults to the open source version which isn't always good enough.

They pulled some of the stuff out in 11.10 that some older NICs actually needed. Old Dell machines especially will have trouble with wireless on 12.04, sad to say, you may be boned.

May I suggest Debain or Linux Mint, you can at least test wireless with Mint's Live CD.

Or perhaps Linux Mint Debian Edition. I switched to LM when Ubuntu got unusable and I'll be using LMDE in the future as it completely sidesteps all the Canonical stupidness.

Its a Belkin N600 DB thumb drive sort of card. I just purchased it in the last few months so its very up to date. It doesn't work automatically though. I had to use ndiswrapper and it worked perfectly until today when I updated.

I'm using the proprietary driver that comes with the cd.

From what I can find on the internet this issue is mainly caused by the module never being installed or was compiled incorrectly, but the problem is I can't connect to the internet on that partition in order to try and reinstall. I built my computer from the ground up a year ago so I'm really hoping it hasn't already stopped being supported like orcishgamer said is a possibility!

I'm pretty fed up with Ubuntu at this point anyway what with the switch to Unity. I'm thinking about trying this openSUSE choose-what-you-want-to-install thing I've heard about.

Ah, yeah, if it's a new card it shouldn't have its support pulled already.

OpenSUSE isn't too bad, but be aware that the package system is often times a headache. Or at least it was for the things I wanted to install. But, if it's not a problem for you, then it's a nice distro.

Otherwise, I'd recommend just sticking with some Debian variant as you'll have access to the same software. Mint is nice because the distro fixes things that are broken in most other distros like Gnomeshell and such.

Im going to second linux mint.... ive never had an issue except with access a temperamental CUPS server...

Mint 13 coming in a few months will have a much nice UI as default, and there compatibility is beyond compare... they have the same "pop" in the Top Left corner as Ubuntu if you like that... as for memory and speed you can run the OS in "MATE" and you'll see an XFCE style of resource usage... which again come Mint 13 will be a non-issue...

as for your card why not grab a patch cable and go bare wire into the net just to grab what you need... if its a new PC then your mobo should have a nic built in that'll be recognised by 12

This is one of the reasons why I'm started liking Ubuntu less and less. For no clear reason they've pulled legacy support for even more devices. I remember upgrading an old Dell Inspiron clunker once from 9.04, which worked beautifully on it, up to 10.04, only to find that for some arbitrary reason they'd stopped supporting 3D acceleration on the laptop's graphics. Yeah, their stubborn insistence on using Unity is what really killed it for me, especially now that they've dropped Gnome entirely and gone whole-hog with Unity. I much prefer Lubuntu, especially now that it's finally gained official recognition alongside Kubuntu and Xubuntu.

Yeah, I found they pulled support for the old Radeon 9700 and 9800 Pros back in 9.04 or so. I think they just don't want to test that stuff and for awhile they were trying to keep the install on a CD (I think this may no longer be a concern, haven't checked). Why they didn't keep a legacy repo for old stuff like that is beyond me though...

Well with such an unfortunate choice of name you can't blame them for not wanting to recognize it for some time :-P

I hear this a lot and to be honest, don't get it. Especially if you're leaving Ubuntu for a nother distro that lets you "choose what you want to install." First off, you're not stuck in Unity, even in Ubuntu. You can do as the second post said, and install [KXL]ubuntu. Or, if that's not your style (or you're tied to Ubuntu), simply don't use Unity. Install KDE. Or XKDE. Or GNOME. Or XMonad. Or Ratpoison. Or Awesome. Or shit, don't use a GUI.

And if uninstalling software or uninstalling Unity is troubling, grab the minimalist CD and start with nothing and just install what you want. I'm not knocking trying openSUSE, which I also think is great.

But we're a year into the Unity experiment now. First off, it's worlds better than it used to be (and frankly, is actually pretty efficient once you use it), and secondly, if you don't like it, tweak your system to what you want. But I get tired of hearing people piss and moan about Ubuntu and Unity like there's nothing they can do about it.

Just wanted to plug Cinnamon again for Linux Mint.. you can install it though apt-get and use it right now in Linux Mint 12

It gives you everything you expect from Ubuntu and all the compatibility but a workable friendly interface thats as light as XFCE