Poor Wireless Performance
Whilst the laptop is a great little machine, since I installed Ubuntu Karmic on it, the wireless connection had been completely useless. At first, Network Manager would report great signal strength for wireless networks within range of the netbook. However, once connected to the access point, the wireless signal which was first reported at over 80% would rapidly deteriorate to something much lower, often below 30%. Even when the computer was within metres of the wireless access point, the connection speed would be incredibly slow and I frequently experienced wireless drops, especially when connecting to secure wireless networks.

Solution at hand
However, fear not. After doing much searching around on the internet it seems that there is a solution to this problem. I managed to find a bug on launchpad where other EeePC 1005HA users suggested that installing the “Karmic Wireless Backports Module” would make most of the problems go away. This module contains all the cutting edge wireless drivers for Ubuntu Karmic from the testing repositories which haven’t yet been officially released.

After installing the module via apt-get, I have experienced a 30% increase in wireless signal strength, a faster connection and no drops for the last half and hour or so, it would indeed seem that the problem is solved or at least much less annoying. Here are the steps you need to follow to install the backport modules:

Enable Karmic backports
First we need to enable the Karmic backports repository. Open up “Software Sources” and browse to the “Updates” tab, make sure the karmic-backports option is ticked.

Install the Karmic wireless backports module
Now open a terminal and enter the following commands to install the backports wireless module.

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-wireless-karmic-generic

Please note that it is not recommended to install linux-backports-modules-karmic-generic as it has been suggested in some posts as this may affect other things on your system apart from the wireless.

Once complete, reboot your computer and enjoy.