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  1. Member
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    Leaving on a trip very soon and trying get my Netbook to connect to Xfinity WiFi in Linux Mint. It is dual boot Windows XP/Linux Mint. The XP sees Xfinity but Linux does not. The Linux will connect to my home WiFi, but that won't help me on my trip.
    The reason I need Xfinity WiFi is because I have Comcast/Xfinity service and xfinity WiFi is free and covers quite a bit of the country, especially most of the places I am traveling.Any Ideas?
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    Truth be told my first idea is that this is an odd place to seek tech support for linux wireless issues.

    What mint version/DE are you running (the release is essential to know, the DE less so)? What responses did you get from the Mint forums? I know they can be a bit useless ... I have 2 Mint installs and often look at the ubuntu sites for support. I've had wireless issues with my netbook and done exactly that in Mint, though I've distro hopped on it too.

    The reason you need the release number is that a solution for one release will very likely not work with another. Whatever you find, don't do it unless it says it's for your Mint release or the Ubuntu release it's based on.

    Actually Comcast is known to be problematic in linux. They care about linux even less than Apple does. This is the best I can find (and it only applies to 14.04):

    http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2248151

    You'll need to know more hardware info. See:

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WirelessTroubleshootingProcedure

    to see how. Then search ubuntuforums and askubuntu. Also, though I've always found mintforums useless for wireless problems, try searching there for comcast problems.
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    Hoser Rob...thanks for the reply. Looking into your suggestions. Very new to Linux so still fumbling around.
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  4. I don't have Comcast internet, but I've heard of Xfinity home hotspot. AFAIK, it's like a guest account that runs on the 5GHz band. If you don't see it in the list of available wifi sites it may be that you don't have the 5 GHz band enabled in your wifi adapter settings or the linux driver doesn't support it. If it's the latter you should be able to use the NDISwrapper driver to install the wifi card's Windows driver.
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    Turning off the 5GHz does work in linux for some problematic wifi cards but it's not a general purpose solution.

    Ndiswrapper is something linux noobs latch onto but it's a bad idea unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.

    If installing the Windows driver was all that reliable wouldn't everyone just do that? They don't because it's not reliable.

    If the wireless adapter truly isn't supported in linux you're better off just buying a USB wireless dongle that is properly supported. Though that's not as transparent as it sounds. Sometimes they change the actual adapter inside and don't tell anyone.

    And sometimes a wireless adapter may have several different cards with the same model name. You need the PCI ID number, which in a Ubuntu based system can be found with (in terminal):

    lspci -nn -d 14e4:

    The number following 14e4: in the output is the actual model.

    However, I don't think it's a wireless driver issue. I still think it's Comcast. Lots of stuff about it at ubuntuforums.
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  6. Originally Posted by Hoser Rob View Post
    Turning off the 5GHz does work in linux for some problematic wifi cards but it's not a general purpose solution.
    He needs to check that it's turned on in Linux, if his adapter doesn't listen to that band he can't see Xfinity.

    Originally Posted by Hoser Rob View Post
    Ndiswrapper is something linux noobs latch onto but it's a bad idea unless ABSOLUTELY necessary.
    Don't shoot it down unless you tried it and it didn't work. That might be the only way to get all the functionality of his adapter.

    Originally Posted by Hoser Rob View Post
    If the wireless adapter truly isn't supported in linux you're better off just buying a USB wireless dongle that is properly supported.
    Jumping through hoops and replacing the internal adapter for the sake of Linux is stupid. You want crazy try running a dual band router in wireless bridge mode on one band and access point on the other. It would be simpler to get a cheap dual band router, setup a wireless bridge to Xfinity Home Hotspot and connect the laptop with an ethernet cable.
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    The problem is not trying to connect to my home router with Linux, that it does. I can't connect to Xfinity's router outside of my home in Linux. The same computer (Netbook) will connect in XP, but not in Linux. My Windows 7 Desktop & Laptop do connect to my home WiFi & the Xfinity WiFi in my neighborhood. The Netbook XP does, but when I boot it up in Linux It does not see the Xfinity connection.
    As I will be traveling around the country I wanted it to be able to connect to the Xfinity WiFi wherever it was available. I assume that if it won't connect here then it won't connect anyplace else. In fact, I'm wondering if it will connect to any WiFi outside of my home connection.
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    Let me amend that. When I say connect I really mean will it even see Xfinity like it does in XP.
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    Look, just get your network hardware info and search the ubuntu support sites for info re your hardware and Comcast.

    There are tons of posts re problems with comcast.

    What luck did you have with the mint forum support? It's nowhere near as good as ubuntu's ... I use mint and look at ubuntu support more than mint's ... but you're not going to do any better here.
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    Still waiting to get a reply from mint forum.
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    PROBLEM SOLVED... It was so simple I really feel kinda stupid.
    Right click on the WiFi connection in the task bar (right side)/Edit Connections/Add/
    Choose a connection type/Wi-Fi
    in SSID box type in Xfinity/Save

    Up comes Xfinity & just sign in (if you are a Comcast costumer).
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