There are two wireless networks in my neighborhood: mine and a neighbors. When I plug the USB Network adapter into the other computer in the house, Windows says, effectively, "Oooh! Look! Wireless networks! Cool! Let's link to one!"

I installed linux on an old computer, attached a USB wireless network adapter to it. Ubuntu told me, "Hey, that's a USB wireless network adapter! Cool!" And that's all. I check the device manager, and it seems to be working. The computer, however, doesn't seem to be able to find either of the networks in the area. ARGHH!

Now, I've been to the Ubuntu community pages and I've been to their wiki, but apparently, I'm the only person interested in this. I did find instructions on installing a wireless network adapter on a previous release. Now I have the latest Linux Wlan driver, but am unsure if I should try to install it, since it's for a previous version.

Would someone please tell me why I thought using Linux might be fun?