Disable built-in WiFi card so that USB WiFi device gets used --- systemctl?

[Rolf Turner]

So far I have received no useful responses to my question (given 
below).  However I have
recently seen in another thread a considerable amount of discussion of 
something called
"systemctl".  This sounds like it *might* do what I want.  However 
looking at the man page
for systemctl leaves just as ignorant as when I started.  It's way over 
my head.  Can someone
tell me:

     (a) Would systemctl do what I want, i.e. serve to disable (mask?) 
the internal WiFi card?
     (b) Would it be possible to disable/mask the internal WiFi card but 
leave the USB WiFi device
     available, so that I can actually get a WiFi connection?
     (c) If the answers to (a) and (b) are "Yes", then could some kind 
soul please guide me as
     to the syntax to use in calling upon systemctl?  In particular, how 
do I specify what it is that
     I want disabled/masked in such a way that systemctl will understand 
what I'm talking about?

     cheers,

         Rolf Turner

On 28/07/13 08:42, Rolf Turner wrote:
>
>
> I have a Toshiba Satellite L850 Laptop for which the WiFi card appears 
> to be incompatible
> with any drivers available for Linux.  To try to get around this 
> problem I recently purchased
> a USB WiFi device:  An ASUS USB-N110.  They (ASUS) provide drivers 
> which one must
> install.  After a great deal of travail and fumbling around (the 
> instructions were both unclear
> --- apparently written by someone for whom English was at best a 
> *third* language ---
> and slightly misleading) I managed to get the device *partially* working.
>
> The device appears to work immediately after boot-up but if I close 
> the lid of my laptop,
> (which causes it to go into hibernation (???) mode) or if I log out 
> and log back in,
> the WiFi connection gets lost.  When I try to restore the connection 
> it seems to keep
> trying to use the WiFi card that is built into the laptop rather than 
> the USB WiFi device.
> (And the built-in device doesn't work;  as I said, its drivers are 
> incompatible with Linux OSes.
> Which is why I bought the USN-N10 in the first place.)  The only way 
> to get the laptop to
> make use of the USB WiFi device seems to be to shut down and restart.  
> This is unsatisfactory.
>
> Is there any way to "disable" the (non-functional) built-in WiFi card 
> so that the laptop will
> *not* try to use it but will rather go straight to the (functional) 
> USB device?  I Googled around
> a bit and found some instructions for disabling the built-in WiFi card 
> under Ubuntu, but
> these instruction did not (as far as I could tell) mesh with the 
> Fedora system that I am
> running.  Can anyone tell me how to do what I want under Fedora?
>
> If you reply, ***PLEASE*** be as clear and explicit as you possibly 
> can.  I am not terribly
> swift with OS matters.  I know and understand ***some*** things, but 
> there are huge
> lacunae in my knowledge.
>
> I am running Fedora 17; output of "uname -a" is:
>
>> Linux localhost.localdomain 3.3.4-5.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Mon May 7 
>> 17:29:34 UTC 2012 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
>
> Thanks for any help that anyone can give me.