SubVS.co.uk

There seems to be a lot of moaning that network manager in the latest alpha of ubuntu doesnt pick up wireless networks, with the blame given to nm, kde, gnome, ubuntu and linux in general. In the case of intel wireless at least, its a simple fix - because linux-ubuntu-modules has not yet been released for 2.6.26-3, the needed iwl firmware is not there (a quick look in /var/log/syslog confirms this). There are a few ways to fix this:

• Try linux-ubuntu-modules for a different kernel
• Fetch the firmware from the intel website and save it to /lib/firmware
• Install the debian package firmware-iwlwifi 

I chose the debian package method, nice and easy, just download and install from http://packages.debian.org/sid/all/firmware-iwlwifi/download - but beware, this will probably bite you when l-u-m are released, and doesnt want to overwrite these files, you will probably need to remove this package before installing.