After stripping my shiny new Samsung N210 of the bloated preinstalled operating system and replacing with Ubuntu's latest offering, I was thrilled with my ultra-portable intuitive work-play thing. Admittedly, yes, wireless was at first an issue though my man had experienced something similar with his own Samsung netbook and knew exactly what to do to get me up and running in a snap.

However, after a recent update, wireless suddenly ceased to work. A quick investigation revealed that somehow the drivers had disappeared from the system. I love being wire-free (especially as the battery on this baby lasts sooooo long!), so a quick fix was needed and Google was more than willing to lend a helping hand.

The method which worked for me (after several previous failed attempts) was explained by WaFiTz in the third of his explorations into N210 wireless issues.

For my own future reference (and of course anyone Googling for a solution to the same issue) here's my own interpretation of his guide which might also save the trouble of reading through the two previous posts for clarification.

The Samsung N210's problem with wireless when running Ubuntu 10.10 (and several previous variations of the OS) is that the package does not include drivers for the installed Realtek wireless card. This means that (in most cases) the N210 will not be able to pick up wireless access points until the driver has been installed.

To check if your N210 has the same problem as mine did, open up a Terminal and type the following (press enter after each line):

lspci -nn | grep Network
sudo lshw -C network

Within the data produced by these commands, you need to look out for the following:

*-network UNCLAIMED

This will indicate that the required drivers for your Realtek wireless card are not properly instaled.

WaFiTz's method uses a program developed by German blogger, Dirk Hoeschen which automates the fix in a few simple commands.

Download the script from this page and save this to your Home folder (it's much easier to use this afterwards). If you save this anywhere else (eg: Desktop, Downloads), you will need to cd (change directory) in Terminal in order to open the downloaded folder. Once downloaded, extract the files within the same folder.

Once you've downloaded the program folder, open up Terminal and type the following commands, again each on it's own line:

sudo apt-get install build-essential
cd rtl819Xe
sudo ./install.sh

Leave the Terminal running, even if it seems nothing is actually happening. I noticed it takes a few minutes to run the complete program. Using this, you won't need to restart your netbook for the changes to take effect.

Once the program has completed it's run you'll be able to see that inviting Wireless network icon in your taskbar again, ready to connect to your favored Internet supply. Much simpler and easier to understand than some of the methods I've tried!

Many thanks to WaFiTz and Dirk Hoeschenfor all of their hard work in solving the issue! Please let me know in the comments if this solution worked for you too.