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Ok. so I know there are about a million threads on this subject already, but NOTHING has worked for me. About to lose my mind here, if someone can please help I will be eternally grateful.

I have a Dell Inspiron E1505 which has a Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 wireless controller. I can't get it to work.

I've followed the steps outlined on the following sites:

How can I get Broadcom BCM4311 Wireless working?
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2072887
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/WifiDocs/Driver/Ndiswrapper

and more. Nothing is working, and I'm on the verge of giving up. As a Linux newbie I can only imagine I'm missing something stupidly obvious. If someone could give me a step-by-step instruction for going from a completely fresh 12.10 install to having a working wifi connection I would be (as mentioned earlier) eternally grateful. Please let me know if anyone needs more info.

Community
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Jason Hamje
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  • Seems like all you need is sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer b43-fwcutter to install the driver, and reboot. Needless to say, you'll need a wired connection for the command to work, and in case there are any errors, post them. – mikewhatever Mar 21 '13 at 23:59
  • @mikewhatever: just did a fresh install, ran that line on terminal and got no errors. Unplugged ethernet, rebooted -- nothing. if I run iwconfig I get: lo no wireless extensions, eth1 no wireless extensions. I've tried hitting the Fn+F2 key which is supposed to turn wireles on and off and it makes no difference. Any other ideas? – Jason Hamje Mar 22 '13 at 01:57
  • Check if the b43 module is loaded: lsmod | grep b43. If not, load it with sudo modprobe b43. If you want serious help, please add the output of lsmod and lspci to the question. – mikewhatever Mar 22 '13 at 02:58
  • Also make sure your hardware switch it in the "On" position. – Seth Mar 22 '13 at 03:09
  • Please run lspci -vvnn -d 14e4: and confirm that the pci-id of the chip is NOT [14e4:4313] According to http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43 That chip takes the wl driver and not the b43. – ubfan1 Mar 22 '13 at 03:40
  • @mikewhatever that did it. I could kiss you. Question, it looks like when I reboot I have to sudo modprobe b43 each time, how can I make it load automatically? – Jason Hamje Mar 22 '13 at 03:47
  • Yep, that's also easy. Just run echo b43 | sudo tee -a /etc/modules. That adds b43 to /etc/modules to autoload it. I've put all the steps into an answer below. – mikewhatever Mar 22 '13 at 11:29
  • This answer is WORKING THANK YOU!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 days I am looking for a working answer and finaly a got it :) –  Sep 13 '14 at 18:22
  • possible duplicate of Installing Broadcom Wireless Drivers – Eliah Kagan Apr 10 '15 at 06:11

1 Answers1

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On a clean install, connect an ethernet cable, open a terminal window, and run

sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer b43-fwcutter

Then run echo b43 | sudo tee -a /etc/modules to make sure the module is autoloaded. Reboot, and if all goes well, the wireless should work.

mikewhatever
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    thanks again, sir. eternal gratitude. Hope someone else finds this useful as well – Jason Hamje Mar 22 '13 at 15:18
  • Most welcome, glad I could help. – mikewhatever Mar 22 '13 at 16:54
  • I would like to test this on an Ubuntu 22.04 installer run from USB stick, before actually overwriting my old Win7 on the hard disk. Can this be tested in any way without rebooting? Or can I make the changes permanent on the USB drive, so they survive a reboot? For 25 years I have been wondering now why Linux does not just work out of the box. I know how to use Linux incl. console, but setting up the hardware to actually work has always been a pain on all the laptops I ever tested it on. – kriegaex Jul 22 '22 at 15:04
  • @kriegaex Sure, test it. Wireless connectivity has improved a lot in the last 25 years. I don't have the exact hardware in question, but BCM4313 just worked in 20.04. You might get lucky too. – mikewhatever Jul 22 '22 at 19:23
  • I would not have asked if it worked in 22.04. It does not. Even as early as GRUB I already needed an extra parameter to see anything but vertical stripes on the screen, just like back in 2008 with the exact same laptop. Nothing has improved for me, and I keep switching back to Windows. Not to mention the WiFi driver. – kriegaex Jul 23 '22 at 03:39
  • Oh well, what can I say. Try again in 2047. :~) – mikewhatever Jul 23 '22 at 22:00