wireless - Installing 12.04 - no launcher icons, no wifi

The laptop I am trying to convert to ubuntu had XP Pro sp3 on it. It worked fairly well. I was able to use my wifi and get on the Internet and do all the things a PC can do.

So I created a 12.04 DVD install disk. The result was a bit better than trying a USB flash drive. It at least will boot to what I believe to be the splash (maybe a glossary of ubuntu terminology would help). There are the battery, sound, time and little gear looking symbols on the upper right of the screen. There is a column on the left side with a different color, but no visible apps. I hovered the cursor over that area and saw the little side flags popping out to the right showing what each app was (firefox, libre Office, terminal, etc), but the icons are not there. I'm not sure what that might be, but there are some troubles with NVIDIA GeForce FX5200, which is in this pc.

Also, I do not understand why it won't see my wifi. When I run, I believe it was nmtool, in a terminal, all it shows me is wire connection info and no wifi. In bios, there is a Mini PCI device and it shows Wireless. It also shows the device Enabled. Also Wireless is On. The Wireless Control is showing Application. Not sure what that means either. At this time, I am trying to create an Ethernet connection, so I have some Internet access.

Any help with my install would be great, also with this wifi issue.

Following is what I gleaned from the bios regarding what is in this pc.

DELL Inspiron 5150
Intel Pentium 4 --- 2.80 GHz / 1.60 GHz
Current CPU speed is 2.80 GHz
Lvl 2 Cache --- 512 Kb
System Memory --- 2048 MB
Video controller --- NVIDIA GeForce FX5200
Video Memory --- 32MB
Panel Type --- 15” Super XGA+
Audio Controller --- Sigmatel 9750
Modem Controller --- Disabled
Primary Hard Drive --- 30GB
Modular Bay --- CD – RW/DVD Combo

Edit Dec 7 '14 at 23:33:

@chili555 there was no output from lsmod | grep -e wl -e b43. The result of lspci -nn | grep 0200 is:

02:01.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T [14e4:4401] (rev 01)

I was able to connect via Ethernet and re-installed 12.04. I saw during the install files downloading. The install is very unstable. I am able after several restarts to get a Terminal session.

Edit Dec 11 '14 at 3:42:

@chili555 -- found a process for installing NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 drivers. Success.. PC much more stable. Went back and checked wireless commands. All seems to be installed, but still no wireless detection. I see Dell used a small piece of software, I believe called Quickset, to turn on/off the WLAN card. Is there a ubuntu variant to use in its place.

Edit Dec 15 '14 at 4:13:

The results of running: lspci -nn | grep 0280 were:

02:02.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g wireless LAN Controller [14e4:4320] (rev 02)

The driver needed was b43legacy. Performed the following:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43legacy-installer

The install completed successfully, but the wireless isn't seeing my wireless signal. More investigation indicated that Dell used a utility name a Quickset utility to turn on / off the radio on the card. I received a comment to my question that took me to the Ubuntu wiki:

I then went to the FAQ from that page and there was a question:

Q: The radio-enable-button on my laptop does not work.

A: You have to enable RF-kill support in the kernel configuration. The
config options you have to enable are: CONFIG_RFKILL,
CONFIG_RFKILL_INPUT, CONFIG_INPUT_POLLDEV.

Before proceeding I would like to do as the answer indicates, but I do not know what the command string would look like.