DarkVader1909-OS is a Linux spin created using Systemback and is based on Linux Mint 19.2 Tina (created from both Debian and Ubuntu features). This OS is very customized, contains many popular packages out of the box, and has a distinctive theme applied.

Cool edit pro portable. The modern Linux distributions have out of the box terrific support for most of the available hardware components, like graphics cards, printers and Wi-Fi adapters. And with HWE, or Hardware Enablement, it has become even more convenient catching up with the latest hardware technologies in your Ubuntu based Linux distro of choice. But it is always possible that the setup procedure, when installing the distro from scratch, doesn’t come up directly with the correct or most optimized drivers for your devices. In this tutorial I will show you how to install Wi-Fi drivers in Linux Mint or what you can do if there is no solution for your specific hardware.

Install driver for Wi-Fi adapters manually

When you install Linux Mint on a desktop or laptop with a build in Wi-Fi adapter, it is generally speaking to be expected that it will be recognized automatically, but there is also a chance that this adapter is not automatically being recognized during the installation process. So what can you do next?

A real life example
As you can read in my article “Bring your MacBook Aluminum Late 2008 back to life again with Linux“, I have been a very satisfied user of the OS X / macOS operating system for more than 10 years. But due to increasing hardware issues and lack of support by Apple, I looked for something different. One of the things I did was to swap OS X on my still working MacBook with Linux Mint, which was a great decision.

But there was a hurdle. The Broadcom BCM4322 Wireless Controller in the old Apple MacBook late 2008, is not automatically recognized by default during the Linux Mint installation process. But I knew from other websites that Linux Mint should work fine on this specific equipment. So the solution for me and probably for a lot of other devices is simple: if you have the opportunity to temporarily make a wired internet connection, then this issue can be solved within a few minutes by going through the below steps in Linux Mint.

1) Connect your computer via a network cable.
2) Open the applications menu in Linux Mint.
3) Choose Driver Manager under the Administration category and enter your password.

After a standard cache update takes place, Driver Manager displays an overview of device components that require a driver. Here hopefully a driver for your wireless adapter will be available. In the case of my macBook it did.

4) Under Broadcom Corporation, select bcmwl-kernel-source for the recommended option.

The operating system should now be restarted and Wi-Fi on this machine will then work perfectly.

Of course the above example is based on my old macBook and the hardware in it , so in your specific case the above steps will hopefully show the right driver for your device. But what if it doesn’t?

What if you still can’t bring your Wi-Fi back to life

The above approach should be working for a lot of other wireless adapters as well, as more and more adapters are supported out of the box by included driver software. But there is a chance that you have a wireless adapter in your system for which this approach is not working. This could be a kind of an issue as many articles on the internet proves that there are still a lot of problems with Wi-Fi adapters getting to work in Linux. Therefore it is almost impossible to come up with good generic advice to solve problems with respect to specific adapters. But my articles on this website are there to make your Linux life a bit simpler, so if you don’t want to search yourself for solutions for your current not working internal or external Wi-Fi adapter, I simply advise you to buy an external Wi-Fi adapter that has proven to work perfectly fine with Linux (as Wi-Fi USB adapters are very cheap these days).

The most important component of a wireless adapter that guarantees compatibility with Linux is the chipset in the wireless adapter. According to a great article on www.wirelesshack.org (this is a good source of news for electronic projects including Kali Linux, Wireless Security, KODI, SDR, Raspberry Pi, How-To- information, Reviews, Guides and Tutorials) on popular chipsets, called “Top Best Linux Compatible USB Wireless Adapters“, you have to look for Wi-Fi adapters with one of the following chipsets: Ralink 3070, Ralink RT5572, Atheros AR9271, and Realtek 8187.

Based on the analysis of the writer of the above mentioned article, and the analysis I did myself on lots of the reviews on Amazon and other websites, containing user experiences on some specific adapters, I can say that below adapters should be good options to solve your wireless problems.

Penguin wireless products

If you want to go for real Linux compatibility, have a look at some of the products of Penguin:

• Chipset: Atheros AR9271
• Supports Linux Mint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14.1, 15, 16, 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3
  For in depth information go to https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usb

• Chipset: Atheros AR9271
• Supports Linux Mint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14.1, 15, 16, 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3
  For in depth information go to https://www.thinkpenguin.com/gnu-linux/penguin-wireless-n-usb-adapter-w-external-antenna-gnu-linux-tpe-n150usbl

Panda wireless products

Another great brand that has Linux in mind is Panda.

Panda N600 Dual Band (2.4GHz & 5.0GHz) 300Mbps Wireless N USB Adapter w/WPS Button [<< Affiliate link]

• Chipset: Ralink RT5572
• Supports Linux Mint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14.1, 15, 16, 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3

Panda Wireless PAU09 N600 Dual Band (2.4GHz and 5GHz) Wireless N USB Adapter W/Dual 5dBi Antennas [<< Affiliate link]

• Chipset: Ralink RT5572
• Supports Linux Mint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14.1, 15, 16, 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3

BrosTrend wireless products

BrosTrend 1200Mbps Linux USB WiFi Adapter for Desktop, Laptop of Ubuntu, Mint, Kali, Debian, Lubuntu, Xubuntu, Zorin, Raspbian, Raspberry Pi, Windows 10-XP, 5GHz / 2.4GHz, 2 X 5dBi Antennas, USB 3.0 [<< Affiliate link]

• Chipset: Ralink RT5572
• Supports Linux Mint 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 14.1, 15, 16, 17, 17.1, 17.2, 17.3, 18, 18.1, 18.2, 18.3, 19, 19.1, 19.2, 19.3

Alternative hardware solutions

When you don’t want to or can use usb Wi-Fi dongles or when you have maybe a fixed working place for example at the attic, you have other alternatives as well that don’t require Linux drivers or Linux support. For myself and for family and friends I installed Wi-Fi range extenders with ethernet support, so you can connect the range extender to your Wi-Fi network and you connect your computer via an ethernet cable to the range extender. Another solution is a Passthrough Powerline Wi-Fi kit that runs data through your electrical lines and that connects with your computer via an ethernet cable.

Examples of products that I have great experience with are:

TP-Link N300 WiFi Range Extender Up to 300Mbps WiFi Extender, Repeater, Wifi Signal Booster, Access Point (TL-WA855RE) [<< Affiliate link]

TP-Link AV2000 Powerline Adapter – Gigabit Port, Ethernet Over Power, Plug&Play, Power Saving, MU-MIMO, Noise Filtering(TL-PA9020P KIT) [<< Affiliate link]

Updating your kernel

Another option to have better driver support is probably not the first thing you’ve thought about, namely upgrading to a newer kernel. If you are already on a recent release of your distribution, you probably already have very up to date drivers, but if you are using for example Linux Mint 17, which was released in May 2014, it is based on an old kernel. When you use an old Linux Mint distribution you can upgrade to the most recent version. If you are already on the most recent version you can still upgrade the kernel, as new kernels are released frequently and often contain driver updates. Upgrading a kernel deserves a completely separate tutorial, so I mention it here for information only.

Final words

On my website and in my free Linux Mint course, I try to show you that Linux Mint is simple and works mostly perfectly fine with all of your hardware. Well, Wi-Fi could be one of those deviations that does not fully match my perfect picture of Linux. It is getting better and better, but if you have one of these problematic wireless adapters, it is probably better to skip solving the problem and just buy a cheap compatible adapter that works right away in your nice Linux Mint distribution, or install a Wi-Fi range extender with ethernet support, a Passthrough Powerline solution with ethernet. I hope this article helped to find a working solution.

About the affiliate links in this article

In this article you can find some clearly indicated affiliate links to products that I have actually used or investigated in and that I believe in. This means that, at no additional cost to you, this website will earn a small commission if you choose to click through and make some purchase via the linked website. Please do not spend any money on these products unless you feel you need them or that they will help you achieve your goals. To read more about affiliate links on this website, go to the Affiliate Disclaimer page.

Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu Linux distribution. Linux Mint 19 codename Tara is based on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS. So all the software that is available on Ubuntu 18.04 LTS is also available on Linux Mint 19. Linux Mint 19 also has some extra softwares.

Linux Mint 19 features a nice looking Cinnamon desktop environment. Linux Mint 19 also has images for MATE and XFCE desktop environment.

Beta version of Linux Mint 19 is available for download at the time of this writing. Stable version should be released at the end of June according to Linux Mint’s blog.

In this article, I will show you how to make a Linux Mint 19 bootable USB drive and install Linux Mint 19 from it. Let’s get started.

Downloading Linux Mint 19:

When the stable version of Linux Mint 19 will be released, you can download an image of Linux Mint 19 from https://linuxmint.com/download.php

Linux Mint 19 “Tara” Cinnamon BETA can be downloaded from https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3581

Linux Mint 19 “Tara” MATE BETA can be downloaded from https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3582

Linux Mint 19 “Tara” XFCE BETA can be downloaded from https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3583

I am going use Linux Mint 19 “Tara” Cinnamon BETA in this article.

Making Bootable USB Drive from Linux:

If you have a Linux distribution such as Ubuntu/Debian/Fedora etc installed on your computer, you can make a bootable USB drive of Linux Mint 19 “Tara” with the following command:

NOTE: Here /dev/sdb is the USB drive. You may have a different identifier. Make sure you check with sudo lsblk before you run this command.

Once the process is completed, you should be able to boot from the USB drive.

Making Bootable USB Drive from Windows:

From Windows, Rufus can be used to make a Linux Mint 19 bootable USB drive.

First go to the official website of Rufus at https://rufus.akeo.ie/ and you should see the following window.

Scroll down a little bit to the Download section and click on Rufus Portable link as marked in the screenshot below.

Rufus Portable should be downloaded.

Now run Rufus Portable.

Click on No.

Rufus Portable should start.

Now insert your USB drive. Rufus should detect and select it as you can see from the marked section of the screenshot below.

Now click on Select.

A file picker should be opened. Select your Linux Mint 19 iso file you just downloaded and click on Open.

It should be selected. Now click on START as marked in the screenshot below.

Click on YES.

If you don’t know what it is, just leave the default and click on OK.

All the data of your USB drive should be erased. If you don’t have anything important on your USB drive, click on OK. Otherwise, make a backup of your data and try again.

It should take a while for the process to complete.

Once it’s completed, you can click on CLOSE.

You USB drive is now ready.

Booting from the USB Drive:

Now that you have a bootable USB drive of Linux Mint 19, you can boot from it and install Linux Mint 19 on your computer. First insert your USB drive to your computer. Now you have to select your USB drive from the BIOS of your computer. Usually you press F2 or Delete or some other keys just after you pressed the power button of your computer. It depends on the motherboard of your computer. Please check the manual of your Motherboard for more information.

Once you select your USB drive from the BIOS, you should see the following window. Select Start Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon 64-bit and press <Enter>.

You should be booted into the Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon Live DVD.

Installing Linux Mint 19:

In this section, I will show you how to install Linux Mint 19 on your computer.

First double click on Install Linux Mint icon as marked in the screenshot below.

The Linux Mint 19 installer should start. Select your language and click on Continue.

Now select your Keyboard layout and click on Continue.

If you want to install third party drivers and multimedia codecs while installing Linux Mint 19, mark the Install third-party software for graphics and Wi-Fi hardware, Flash, MP3 and other media as marked in the screenshot below. You will need internet connectivity for that. Once you’re done, click on Continue.

If you want to erase everything and install Linux Mint 19 on your hard drive, the easiest option is Erase disk and install Linux Mint.

But if you want to dual boot Windows and Linux, then you will have to select Something else. In this case you can do manual partitioning and install Linux Mint 19 on custom partitions. That’s what I am going to show you in this article.

You may not have a partition table on your hard drive. Just select your hard drive and click on New Partition Table…

Now click on Continue.

For UEFI installation, you need an EFI System partition and a Root(/) partition. For BIOS installation, you only need a Root(/) partition. I am going for the UEFI installation.

To create a new partition, select free space, and click on the + button.

On the Create partition window, make sure the following options are selected. Once you’re done, click on OK. EFI System Partition should be 512 MB in size.

Now create a Root(/) partition with the rest of the free space. Make sure the Mount point is set to /. Once you’re done, click on OK.

Now make sure the correct Device for boot loader installation is selected and then click on Install Now.

Click on Continue.

You may see this warning, just click on Continue.

Now select your location and click on Continue.

Now fill in your personal details and click on Continue.

The installation should start.

Once the installation is complete, click on Restart Now.

Your computer should restart and once it starts you should be booted into your newly installed Linux Mint 19 operating system.

Linux Mint 19 Cinnamon Desktop Environment:

That’s how you make bootable USB drive of Linux Mint 19 and install Linux Mint 19 from the USB drive. Thanks for reading this article.