If you have freshly installed Ubuntu 10.10 then chance might be that your wireless doesn't work out of the box. This might be because you have not installed the required drivers for the wireless card to work properly. Or you might have, and something is blocking it from being turned on. So which is it?

If you haven't (or are sure that no one else has) installed the drivers then you should start with that. 

Go to System > Administration > Additional Drivers. Make sure you are connected to the internet. After clicking on Additional Drivers, Ubuntu will identify proprietary drivers that are to be installed. You might have more than one option for wireless driver. If you have Broadcom STA Wireless Driver listed then choose that.

Click on Activate, and Ubuntu should now download the driver from the internet and install it. You might have to restart your computer, after the installation is complete for the driver to start working

Wireless Remains Off?

If even after installing the drivers the wireless isn't turning on then probably your wireless is being soft blocked. You will understand what to do in a minute.

Open a terminal. Application > Accessories > Terminal or (Alt+F2, and type gnome-terminal)

Now in the terminal type

rfkill list

This will list something like this

0: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN

Soft blocked: yes

Hard blocked: no

If either Soft blocked or Hard blocked is yes, then your wireless will not turn on. 

The following command will unblock everything and have your wireless turned on.

sudo rfkill unblock all

Enter your password, when prompted and the wireless would automatically turn on. But if it doesn't then just press the button and it should turn on.

Didn't work for you? Please feel free to post your queries in the comments section!