Elementary OS, no network connection, need help

[Sycro]

Hi, Linux noob here, could really use with a hand.
So TL:DR intro: Built a new pc, Ryzen 9 5900x (by some miracle i found one), b550 Gigabyte Aorus elite board, a gtx970 (to be replaced w/ 3080); ran a hackintosh build for the past half-decade before this, can't stand W10 but im resorting to it for now, need Linux operational.

I installed Elementary OS, but it doesn't detect the Ethernet connection so it didn't download a lot of essential stuff. I downloaded the realtek network drivers onto a usb but needed to run the 'make' command which is unavailable as it didn't install 'build essentials' since there's no internet connection. So I googled how to install stuff on linux offline and got to guides using Keryx as a mobile software on a USB. I tried that but that needs a 'wxversion module' which again needs to be downloaded and is currently unavailable. If anyone could chime in with some useful advice I'd be really thankful 

[gardotd426]

You don't need to do any of that. 

 

Just go ahead and get the .deb files for the packages you need to install. Make sure they're for the correct version of Ubuntu the Elementary OS you're using is based on. Probably 20.04 (or 18.04 depending on the age). Go to Repology, and search for the package. It will allow you to download the .dep packages. From there, you can put them on a USB, then double-click them from Elementary and gdebi should just run and install them like a Windows installer.. If for some reason gdebi isn't installed, you can just do it from the terminal with:

 

sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb

Though you might want to actually make sure your network adapter isn't being detected and that it's not some other problem. Though I imagine you'd need to install net_tools or whatever for that, to get ifconfig. Either way, that should be plenty to get you going. 

 

I found the link for the 20.04 version of build-essential, it's here: https://packages.ubuntu.com/focal/amd64/build-essential/download

 

Again, if you're on 18.04, just go to packages.ubuntu.com and click on bionic and then development -> build-essential. 

 

Though it also depends on these packages: libc6-dev | libc-dev, gcc (>= 4:9.2), g++ (>= 4:9.2), make, dpkg-dev (>= 1.17.11)

 

(note that make is one of them, so build-essential doesn't even provide make), so you'll need those too. Again, you'll probably want to go to Repology.org or packages.ubuntu.com and just download those .deb packages. Make sure to download the amd64 ones (the name will be in the extension, you need either amd64 or "all" to be in there). 

 

From what I can see, every package you need is easily findable on packages.ubuntu.org. 

[gardotd426]

I will say though, that you might want to just consider using something other than Elementary. It's a meme that Elementary looks kind of like MacOS, but you can make Plasma look even *more* like MacOS, with a global menu and everything. 

 

For example, note the global menu on the top left of my panel in Plasma on Arch Linux, and the dock at the bottom, etc. 

 

Now obviously my icon theme isn't very MacOS-ey, but look if I just change the icon theme, in the picture on the bottom it's a lot more like it. 

 

Elementary in my experience is a pain in the ass. There's no support for PPAs out of the box, it's mostly just looks, etc. But anyway, if you insist on using Elementary, I'm happy to help.