Thanks, Brian. I'm sure you're right about Debian not having had the wifi driver on 6.0.4. After poking around on the web I found these: 2,073,782 firmware-iwlwifi_0.28+squeeze1_all.deb 9,396,098 firmware-nonfree_0.28+squeeze1.tar.gz 135,014 wireless-tools_30~pre9-5_amd64.deb The tarball is just the sources for the first one, I guess. Now that I have an almost complete installation, how do I incorporate the above .deb files into the system? Do I have to burn them onto their own cd or dvd and then re-install everything? I will report back with the output of lspci -nn before tinkering with the Debian install any further. Ed > On Sun, Nov 11, 2012 at 5:55 PM, Ed C. <eminmn at sysmatrix.net> wrote: >> >> Sorry about the scattergun approach. I was trying to provide as much >> context as possible for dealing with the main question: why didn't >> Debian figure out the Thinkpad wifi requirements? I've installed >> slackware, red hat, and a couple of buntu's and the wifi always worked > > Two thoughts: > > I had an issue dual booting my Win7 laptop and Fedora. For some > reason, rebooting the laptop into the other OS would cause the wifi > NIC to go offline. In order for the NIC to function, I ahd to shut > down the laptop, then power it on between OS changes. That was > specific to an Intel B/G card. The Thinkpad t61 seems to provide wifi in win7 and not in Debian whether I reboot or power down. > > For awhile the Atheros driver was considered "dirty" (as in contained > code from undetermined sources) so Debian did not include the drivers > in the standard distro. I don't know if this is related or not to > your issue, but it could explain why Debian didn't just see and use > your wifi. Sometimes Debian doesn't include "normal" stuff to remain > free of copyright issues. > > Can you please post the output of 'lspci -nn'? That will give us a > hint about your wifi card and perhaps hint at the issue. > > Brian > _______________________________________________ > TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > http://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list >