Alienware 17 R4 Ubuntu 16.04 WiFi driver

I have installed Ubuntu 16.04 on my new Alienware 17 R4 laptop that comes with Killer 1550 WiFi network card. Currently I am running on LAN cable to connect to the internet but would very much like to make use of my WiFi card. I have tested that it works well in Windows 10.

How do I get Killer 1550 installed on Alienware 17 R4?

The following are my outputs from sudo lshw -C network:

hello@world:~$ sudo lshw -C network

*-network
description: Ethernet interface
product: Qualcomm Atheros
vendor: Qualcomm Atheros
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:3c:00.0
logical name: enp60s0
version: 10
serial: 10:65:30:fd:d6:35
size: 100Mbit/s
capacity: 1Gbit/s
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm pciexpress msi msix bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=alx duplex=full ip=192.168.1.92 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twisted pair speed=100Mbit/s
resources: irq:16 memory:dd300000-dd33ffff ioport:d000(size=128)

***-network UNCLAIMED
description: Network controller
product: Intel Corporation
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 0
bus info: pci@0000:3d:00.0
version: 29
width: 64 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm msi pciexpress msix cap_list
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:dd200000-dd203fff**

I can certainly use my ethernet hence I believe I do have the Qualcomm Atheros driver. Probing further on my network controller (WiFi card?):

hello@world:~$ lspci -knn | grep Net -A2
3d:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Intel Corporation Device [8086:2526] (rev 29)
Subsystem: Bigfoot Networks, Inc. Device [1a56:1550]
3e:00.0 Non-Volatile memory controller [0108]: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0116]
Subsystem: Toshiba America Info Systems Device [1179:0001]

In case this could be of any useful information, my current linux kernel is:

hello@world:~$ uname -r
4.13.0-37-generic

Thank you all for reading and your kind assistance in getting my wifi to work!

P.S.: I tried suggestions found here Wifi not working in Ubuntu 16.04 LTS on an Alienware 17 R4 but it doesn't work for me.


Solution 1:

Intel recently added the VID and PID to their backports, to install

sudo apt-get install git
git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/iwlwifi/backport-iwlwifi.git
cd backport-iwlwifi
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
sed -i 's/CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS=y/# CPTCFG_IWLMVM_VENDOR_CMDS is not set/' .config
make -j4
sudo make install
Reboot and if the wireless doesn't work, in terminal dmesg | grep iwl | nc termbin.com 9999 and post the URL from terminal in a comment as we made need to get firmware from upstream

After a kernel update you will need to

cd backport-iwlwifi
make clean
make defconfig-iwlwifi-public
make -j4
sudo make install