I just want to share step by step to activate wireless Acer Aspire 3684 on Ubuntu 8.04. If your wireless chipset is same, you could follow this how to. The chipset that used in here is Atheros AR5007 wireless network adapter and please follow this procedure to make it work in ubuntu 8.04 using the latest MadWiFi drivers.

For 32-bit Users

1. First go to System–>Administration–>Hardware Drivers” and disable by un-ticking the following option:

Atheros Hardware Access Layer (Hal)

Reboot your system.

2. Preparing your system

sudo apt-get install build-essential

Then open the terminal from Applications–>Accessories–>Terminal and copy the following command

wget http://snapshots.madwifi.org/special/madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

tar xfz madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007.tar.gz

cd madwifi-ng-r2756+ar5007

make

sudo make install

sudo modprobe ath_pci

sudo reboot

update:
I’ve just realize that the file above already no longer exist. Please click this link to get the file.

That’s it now your wireless should work without any problem.

Below is for 64bit computer, since my acer laptop still use 32bit. So, I’m no sure the step below will fix your wireless.

For 64-bit Users

1. Blacklist the default driver:

echo “blacklist ath_pci” | sudo tee -a /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

2. Download the 64 bit driver

wget http://blakecmartin.googlepages.com/ar5007eg-64-0.2.tar.gz

3. Extract driver using the following command

tar xvf ar5007eg-*.tar.gz

tar xvf ndiswrapper-newest.tar.gz

4. Ensure you have your kernel headers and the build essential package.

sudo aptitude update

sudo aptitude install linux-headers-$(uname -r) build-essential

5. Install ndisgtk

sudo apt-get install ndisgtk

Either use ndisgtk to install the driver or

sudo ndiswrapper -i net5211.inf

6. Load up ndiswrapper every time Linux is loaded

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

echo “ndiswrapper” | sudo tee -a /etc/modules

Restart your system.