Wireless card will not turn on in openSUSE 11.4

This is the first time I’ve used any version of Suse in years. First of all, trying to install it was a disaster as it tried to format my DVD drive and I was forced to delete my Windows partitions too. That’s not why I’m writing, just thought I’d mention that I was already frustrated to begin with :stuck_out_tongue:

Anyway, I have an HP G62-340US laptop. Everything seems to be running great except that I cannot turn on my wireless. The laptop has a key on the keyboard to power up the wifi and it’s permanently off. Not sure if this is an issue with the keyboard driver, but pressing the wifi key does nothing.

I’ve tried scanning the hardware to determine what wifi device I have, but since it’s not powered up, Linux doesn’t even see it.

Any ideas which direction I should look?

As a side note, I have used Linux fairly regularly for several years. Mostly Ubuntu, LinuxMint and PinguyOS (all debian-based). So I’m not a complete newbie and am perfectly comfortable with the command line and configuration files.

Could be both:
First: it could be that the proper keyboard was not selected. Check in KDE Systemsettings, or in GNOME settings
Second: it could be that the wifi card is not recognized. Please post output of


su -c lspci

First: it could be that the proper keyboard was not selected. Check in KDE Systemsettings, or in GNOME settings
Second: it could be that the wifi card is not recognized. Please post output of

The keyboard is correct. And my wireless card is the Atheros AR9285 which apparently doesn’t work for many people in openSUSE. That is strange, though, since I haven’t had a compatibility issue with Ubuntu or any Ubuntu-based distro.

Same problem here, Atheros driver has some issue with OpenSuse/kernel, it works fine with ubuntu.

Yeah; I couldn’t figure it out. Installed Kubuntu and everything works fine. Thanks for you help, anyway.