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I'm afraid the excellent and lengthy posts in Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers are not solving my problem. I have installed Ubuntu 20.04 on an mid 2007 24" iMac. But I'm a complete Ubuntu newbie. I'll try to make it as clear as possible what I tried and give you the info I have about the hardware.

So first of all: I have a Wifi connection but it's very poor. My iMac is on exactly the same spot where it was before and it had a full strength wifi signal. Now it has only half the strength and it drops out every other minute. I also have the impression that it influences the quality of the signal to my other devices (although I don't know if such a thing is at all possible). Same problem with the Bluetooth connection which drops out regularly.

My PCI.ID is

[14e4:4328] (rev 03)

which puts me in the bcmwl-kernel-source category, according to the Broadcom Wireless Table in the aforementioned discussion. If I understand correctly, this is the driver that came with Ubuntu and was checked in 'Additional Drivers'. Except it doesn't do the job.

Since it's after September 2014, I also installed the other package firmware-b43-installer after uninstalling bcmwl-kernel-source. To no avail. Then uninstalled that second package and turned back to the first one. Doesn't work.

I edited blacklist.conf to put a hashtag in front of blacklist bcm43xx and a lot of the other stuff suggested on the page. The problem is that I don't really have a way of knowing if I'm doing things in the right order since I'm completely new to Linux.

And yes, i have good intentions to inform myself and learn the basics of Linux. Which is (a.o.) why I need a good working wifi connection.

If somebody would be so kind to 'talk me through' the process, I would be very, very happy. This is my wireless-info output: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/HF67Z2KWSh/

Many thanks!

Edit 1. I posted some more diagnostic data here: https://paste.ubuntu.com/p/Mt3RjjpQcQ/

Edit 2. Installing the bcmwl-kernel-source package made my wifi stop working altogether. Removing it brought me back to the same situation as before. So nothing solved yet.

Tom
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    You don't need to uninstall firmware-b43-installer. It is not a driver but a firmware pack. It down't spoil wl. Install bcmwl-kernel-source and post output of lspci -knn | grep Net -A3; rfkill list and dmesg | grep wl. But according to your script output Wi-Fi is working now. – Pilot6 Jun 04 '20 at 17:57
  • Thanks for jumping in @Pilot6. I posted the info you requested in a new Pastebin file (see my edit). As mentioned: the wifi is indeed working, but very faintly and all the time disconnecting/reconnecting. – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 07:37
  • I don't see that bcmwl-kernel-source is installed. Please run sudo apt install bcmwl-kernel-source and post the output. You need to be connected to the internet at that moment. – Pilot6 Jun 05 '20 at 08:48
  • @Pilot6: I installed the bcmwl-kernel-source package and now I have no wifi at all. Not even after rebooting. I can see the networks, but no attempts seem to be made to connect. Since I have no internet on de iMac (I am writing this on the iPad) I cannot post the outputs. In “additional drivers” the Broadcom 802.11 Linux STA Wireless driver source from bcmwl-kernel-source (proprietary) is selected. – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 10:29
  • You can post the output. You can connect using your phone, or save the output as a file, etc. – Pilot6 Jun 05 '20 at 10:31
  • 04:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n [14e4:4328] (rev 03) // Subsystem: Apple Inc. AirPort EXtreme [106b:0088] // Kernel driver in use: wl // Kernel modules: ssb, wl – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 10:54
  • rfkill list // 0: phy0: Wireless LAN: Soft blocked: no // Hard blocked: no // 1: brcmwl-0: Wireless LAN: Soft blocked: no // Hard blocked: no // 2: hci0: Bluetooth: Soft blocked: no // Hard blocked: no – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 10:56
  • dmesg | grep wl: [12.038064] wl: loading out-of-tree module taints kernel. // [12.038070] wl: module license MIXED/Proprietary taints kernel // [12.049470] wl: module verification failed: signature and/or required key missing - tainting kernel // [12.053077] wl 0000:04:00.0: enabling device (0000 -> 0002) // [12.183151] wlan0: Broadcom BCM4328 802.11 Hybrid Wireless Controller 6.30.223.271 (r587334) // [12.377957] wl 0000:04:00.0 wls4: renamed from wlan0 – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 11:02
  • Please don't add information to comments. [edit] your question. Well, it looks that wl is installed, but doesn't work. So remove bcmwl-kernel-source. – Pilot6 Jun 05 '20 at 11:03
  • Understood. bcmwl-kernel-source removed. Reboot. Wifi back as it was before. – Tom Jun 05 '20 at 11:15

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