How to Set Up Wi-Fi on Debian (3 Ways)

Configuring a wireless connection on Linux, especially if you don’t have a desktop interface, is particularly challenging. I recently tried using it on Debian, and it was a mess, with drivers missing and obsolete commands. I did find a solution, so I thought it would be a good idea to share everything with you in this article.

With a desktop environment, a Debian system can be connected to Wi-Fi via the network settings. There is a list of wireless networks available. By clicking on one of them and filling in the correct password, the computer will be connected to it directly.

Note: If you are following this tutorial for Ubuntu or any Ubuntu-based distribution, I would recommend checking my other article instead, there are some slight differences.

But that’s the ideal situation. If you don’t have a Desktop environment, or even worse, if your drivers are not available on Debian, there are a few more steps. I’ll list the 3 main cases on how to effectively configure your Wi-Fi on Debian, so keep reading for all the details.

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Configure the Wi-Fi Connection During Installation

In theory, the network is configured during the Debian installation. If a wireless adapter is detected, and you don’t use an Ethernet connection, the wizard will ask you to pick a wireless network from a list.

This step looks like this:

From there, you just have to pick your own wireless network. Click “Continue” and set the password for the connection. In most cases, your DHCP server will assign an IP address to your computer (or the wizard will ask for it), and you’ll be ready to access the Internet.

When I tried it on my laptop, I wasn’t that lucky as no network adapters were detected. I got an error, saying that some drivers were missing and that I needed to install them manually to use the network. I was stuck there, as it was a network installation image.

Luckily, starting with the Bookworm release, the non-free firmware packages are now included in the default installation images. In other words, your network adapters are more likely to be working during installation for Trixie and newer releases.

One last idea you can try is to start with an Ethernet cable, and install the Wi-Fi drivers later, once you have a functional Debian environment.

Bonus tip: At some point, you’ll get tired of copying commands without really understanding them. I put together a cheat sheet with 74 essential commands and simple examples. Grab the file here (free).

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Configure the Wi-Fi from the Desktop Environment

Configuring the Wi-Fi connection from the desktop environment on Debian is straightforward:

• Click on the network icon in the top-right corner to access the system settings.
  It might be slightly different depending on the environment. If you can’t find it, you can go to Settings > Wi-Fi from the main menu.
• You’ll then get a list with all the detected networks:
  If you don’t have any networks listed, make sure the Wi-Fi is enabled in the top-right corner of this window. The airplane mode also needs to be disabled.
• Click on the one you want to use, and type the password:
  
• If everything goes well, you should be connected to it a few seconds later.

With most routers, the IP address is assigned to your computer automatically. You can click the configuration icon if you need to change anything manually to the default configuration.

Configure the Wi-Fi Manually (Command Line)

Configuring the Wi-Fi in the command line when you don’t have a desktop environment is more challenging, as you have to edit the network configuration file manually.

Note: This procedure only works on a server edition of Debian. When a desktop environment is installed, NetworkManager takes care of this, and shouldn’t be configured manually. Go back to the previous section.

1. The first step is to find the name assigned to your Wi-Fi adapter:
ip a

In my case above, “wlxa063916feae7” was the name assigned to my Wi-Fi card.

Make the adapter active by bringing it up:
sudo ip link set <wlan0> up
(Don’t forget to replace <wlan0> in the command above with your adapter name.)

2. Next, find what Wi-Fi networks you can connect to:

• Scan for available wireless networks: sudo iwlist scan
• The list includes many details that we don’t need, so let’s filter the output with grep:sudo iwlist scan | grep SSID

The good news is that our wireless adapter is working and detecting wireless networks.

If it doesn’t work, you may need to install additional drivers for it. You can install them manually (check dmesg for more details about the missing files).
I know, installing drivers from the repository when you don’t have Internet access yet is not easy :-).

3. The third step is to manually create the connection.
Open the network configuration file:
sudo nano /etc/network/interfaces

And paste the following lines at the bottom:
allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-ssid SSID
wpa-psk PASSWORD

Important! Don’t forget to replace wlan0 with your adapter name, SSID with your network name, and PASSWORD with your actual network passphrase.

Note: I’m using sudo in my command to make sure they will work on your side, but feel free to switch to the administrator account (root) to do this without it if needed:
su

4. Finally, we’re ready to connect.
Bring the new Wi-Fi interface up:
sudo ifup <wlan0>

Start the connection:
sudo iw <wlan0> link

You should be connected.
Check that you got an IP address:
ip a

That’s it, you are now connected, well done!

I hope this tutorial was useful and helped you to configure the Wi-Fi on your Debian system.
I was surprised that it wasn’t easier, even on an “old” laptop. After using Ubuntu for a while, I quickly forgot these missing drivers were still a thing on Debian.

Anyway, you are now ready to do anything on your new Debian system, so feel free to check my other tutorials on the topic:

• The Easiest Way To Install GNOME on Debian (3 Steps)
• 57 Linux Commands that Everyone Should Know
• Do You Need an Antivirus on Linux? (And how to install it)