You clicked the network. Nothing asked for the password.
During install you click your Wi-Fi. No password field appears — because clicking only highlighted it, and you must confirm the selection first. Nothing on screen says which step you're on.
Facts cited
| Linux desktop share, global | ~4.4% | StatCounter, June 2026 |
|---|---|---|
| Where it happens | OS installation — before any help is available | no browser, no docs, no second device assumed |
| Global life expectancy | 73 years | World Bank, 2023 |
Who can fix it
- Owner
- Canonical (Ubuntu installer network step)
- Channel
- Ubuntu Launchpad · installer (Subiquity/Ubiquity) issues
Installing Ubuntu. You reach the network step, click your Wi-Fi network, and wait for the password box. It doesn’t come. The click only highlighted the row — you have to confirm the selection separately before the password field appears. Nothing on screen makes that clear, so you sit there wondering whether the click registered, whether the network is broken, or whether you missed something.
Two small failures, stacked
- Selection state is not legible. After clicking, it isn’t obvious the row is now selected — so the click reads as “nothing happened” rather than “step one of two complete.”
- The next step is hidden. The password field doesn’t exist until you confirm, so the thing you were looking for is absent, and its absence looks like a fault rather than a sequence.
Either alone is survivable. Together they produce a dead end: no visible change, and no visible next action.
Why it lands harder than it looks
It happens during installation — the one moment when you have no browser, no documentation, no working system, and possibly no second device. Every other paper-cut on this site can be googled. This one can’t, because you’re stuck at the step that would give you internet.
That’s a general principle worth stating: friction in a setup flow costs more than identical friction anywhere else, because the user has no escape hatch and no accumulated knowledge of the system. Setup is where the least-experienced user meets the fewest available tools.
The fix
Show the selection clearly, or skip the step entirely: clicking a network should present the password field immediately. That’s what every phone does, and it’s what the muscle memory expects. If a confirm step must exist, the button for it needs to be obvious and the selected row unmistakable.
Filed as a micro case
Sized on new Linux desktop installs, this is under a lifetime a year — small, because the population is small. It’s here because the rate is high among people meeting the system for the first time, and because it belongs with case 020 and case 021 as part of one first-run experience.
Needs reproducing. Ubuntu has shipped several installers (Ubiquity, then Subiquity/Flutter) and this step has changed between them. The observation is one user’s, on one recent install — before it’s cited anywhere it should be reproduced against current ISOs, and the exact version noted.
Difficulty to fix: none
Clicking a network is unambiguous — nobody clicks their own Wi-Fi by accident. Show the password field right there, at the moment when the user has no other way to ask for help.
Read this case's source — _cases/022-wifi-selection-hidden-step.md