Unfortunately my HP Pavilion desktop computer comes equipped with a Ralink wlan chip that Ubuntu doesn't seem to support very well. After countless times trying to fix the damn thing (I mean someone has probably done that, right?) I just gave up and started using another wlan adapter.

To stop Gnome's NetworkManager constantly trying to connect with it, I obviously needed to disable it somehow. In Windows I would of just gone to Device Manager and disabled it. In Ubuntu things don't seem to be so simple.. After looking through System -> Administration I realized there is no all-compassing device management tool default with Ubuntu.

Some pages I googled told me to launch System -> Administration -> Networking, which I vaguely remember existing in Jaunty. Where it has disappeared since upgrading to Karmic Koala is a mystery to me. Of course this would of only helped with a network device - not much good if I needed to disable a built in sound card for example.

Here's a tip I came across at "Thoughts by Clayg". It requires you know the exact driver that the device uses.

1. Open up a terminal
2. Run 'lsmod | less' to list modules loaded by the kernel. Find the name of the module here (hopefully!)
3. Edit the blacklist file with command 'sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf' (could also be without the .conf end)
4. Add the line 'blacklist [name of your driver]' and save the file.
5. Reboot

[ linux // ubuntu // how to ]