Broadcom WiFi -- for a public library -- in Fedora 13 maybe?

Jerry Feldman gaf at blu.org
Thu Jun 10 14:41:35 EDT 2010


On 06/10/2010 02:30 PM, Alan Johnson wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 10, 2010 at 2:11 PM, Bill Sconce <sconce at in-spec-inc.com
> <mailto:sconce at in-spec-inc.com>> wrote:
>
>     After an initial visit, I burned a Fedora 13 live CD for them
>     to try, took it over to the library, booted it and showed it off.
>     All OK.
>
>     But then the zinger: of COURSE...they only use wireless.  And
>     of COURSE...the laptop has a Broadcom Wifi adapter.  And of course
>     it doesn't work.
>
>
> I've since install Ubuntu 9.10 on a really old Dell laptop with
> broadcom wifi and it works beautifully.  It is not there right after
> install, but when connected wired, it hardware driver tool finds the
> necessary packages and installs them with minimal effort.  You must
> simply agree to the warnings about installing prorpietary crap, and it
> just works.  That said, I don't believe all broadcoms are the same, so
> YMMV, but it is worth a shot IMHO.  If it were me, I'd tried 10.04
> first since that is long term service.
>
> In full disclosure, this machine was rebuild for my son to use with an
> Arduino board I got him for his 5th birthday, so it has not spent much
> time in the "on" state. So, I can't speak explicitly to stability, but
> I never had trouble keeping these Broadcoms on line once they were on.
>  
>
>     (*) 2/22: Wherein Alan Johnson offers the clearly definitive advice,
>         "In any case, be sure to steer clear of Broadcom".
>
>
> Awe, shucks. =)  Also, I think that same thread lists several very
> cheap USB wifi options that just work in Linux.  You can find a nice
> list of them some where on wiki.ubuntu.com <http://wiki.ubuntu.com>
> and I expect Fedora has something similar.
>
Most Broadcom chips work fine in Linux. Like Alan, my laptop is running
fine with Ubuntu 9.10, but it also ran SuSE and Fedora.
First of all you need to install /b43/-/fwcutter. This tool is needed to
extract and install the firmware.  The ubuntu packages for fwcutter will
prompt you to automatically download and install the firmware, but other
distros do not. I recently helped a guy at the installfest who was
installing Linux Mint. In his case, rather than doing it the manual way
I removed the fwcutter package he installed and installed the Ubuntu
9.10 version. His wireless worked after that. /Here is a pretty decent
site that tells you how to install fwcutter and the firmware:
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43.

Additionally, do not use ndiswrapper unless you absolutely have to. That
is like flying a 150 upside down with a manual fuel pump.

-- 
Jerry Feldman <gaf at blu.org>
Boston Linux and Unix
PGP key id: 537C5846
PGP Key fingerprint: 3D1B 8377 A3C0 A5F2 ECBB  CA3B 4607 4319 537C 5846


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