I'm completely new to Ubuntu and do not know much about commands and drivers.
I have an old Asus X553MA running on Ubuntu 22.04.1 LST. To give you some context, I've been using this laptop simply for offline file storage for the last 5 months (I would simply upload PDFs and spreadsheets on it to study without the distractions that come with an internet connection). Since the successful installation and configuration of Ubuntu in January this year, it has not been at all connected to the internet. For this reason, I missed plenty of driver updates, upgrades, and whatnot (red exclamation mark in the upper right corner of the MenuBar). However, I did not give this too much thought, because, as I said, I was not planning to connect the laptop to the internet anyways.
Well, I now really need an internet connection on the device, but the "Wi-Fi connect setting" that should be present in the top-right menu is simply not there. Even the Wi-Fi section is absent from Settings (I have to look it up manually for it to pop up). There is no physical button that would allow toggling the Wi-Fi connection on my laptop. An Ethernet cable is not an option either - I'm renting my place and the router is not mine; Tampering with it does not seem ideal. I keep getting the "No Wi-Fi Adapter Found" error, which - I suppose - is due to the outdated drivers. I've tried to update and upgrade from the terminal; It doesn't work - it requires an internet connection. I've consulted YouTube, most methods boil down to doing this:
sudo lshw -class network
echo "options product_number fwlps=N" | sudo tee /etc/modprobe.d/ product_number .conf
reboot
...which does not achieve anything after rebooting. By the way, I've rebooted countless times, to no avail. Nothing seems to work.
I even bought a USB WiFi network adapter, only to realize I cannot install it on my Ubuntu laptop because the driver of the adapter comes on a CD (I do not have an embedded CD drive), and even if I were to get the file from the CD, it's a .exe that can't run on Linux. ChatGPT suggests I download the drivers manually on another device that has an internet connection, transfer them with a USB drive onto my Ubuntu laptop and install them there.
This issue is highly disappointing, although I realize my device is low-end and outdated. I have absolutely no clue about what I should do, I really need to get an internet connection on my Ubuntu device, but I have no idea how.
sudo lshw -C network gives this:
$ sudo lshw -C network
*-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: BCM43142 802.11b/g/n
vendor: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:02:00.0
version: 01
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:d0700000-d0707fff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: RTL810xE PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller
vendor: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd.
physical id: 0.2
bus info: pci@0000:03:00.2
logical name: enp3s0f2
version: 06
serial: 08:62:66:07:b5:5e
capacity: 100Mbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix vpd bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp mii 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=r8169 driverversion=5.15.0-56-generic firmware=rtl8402-1_0.0.1 10/26/11 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
resources: irq:19 ioport:e000(size=256) memory:d0614000-d0614fff memory:d0610000-d0613fff
Interestingly, I have an unclaimed network. Possibly the one that my laptop was linked to during the installation/configuration of Ubuntu.
My kernel version:
~$ uname -r
5.15.0-56-generic
Here is the output of the wireless-info script: https://pastebin.ubuntu.com/p/vcBj9KFfZS
P.S.: Please note that I have no internet connection on my Ubuntu device. I do not have an Ethernet cable, but I do have another laptop with Windows 11 that has a stable internet connection. How do I establish a connection on the device in question?
