ust installed Mint on a Lenovo laptop, but I cannot get the wireless card to work. lspci shows BCM43142, pci-id 14e4:4365 From ehat I can tell, 4365 is supposed to be compatible with bcmwl-kernel-source, but I sure as h can't get it to work.

I've tried b43-firmwarecutter -w wl_apsta.o (obviously after I downloaded it) and firmware-b43-installer. Neither does bcmwl-kernel-source, or firmware-b43legacy-installer.

Theclosest I've gotten is with bcmwl-kernel-source, with this wireless actually shows up in the network manager, but it is powered off and it's not possible to turn it on. If I try to turn it on, the slider instantly goes back to the off position. iwconfig also says the device is in a "powered off" state. ifconfig up says "Operation not possible due to RF-kill". Various modprobe b43, w1 etc makes no difference either. Secure boot is disabled. Any ideas?

On some laptops there is a small switch on the side of the laptop. Look for a switch.

If you installed the driver reboot your laptop and see if you can connect.

Try here:
Do sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source. This is the official working driver for BCM4314.

https://askubuntu.com/questions/4596...04-trusty-tahr

Hope that helps.

I'm not a wifi expert. I've had trouble getting the wireless to work too.

This laptop does not have a on/off switch for the network card. It's only windows 10's "airplane mode" ,which for the record I made sure was disabled beforehand.
I've installed and re-installed bcmwl-kernel-source 4 or 5 times and rebooted a two digit number of times, but it appears that the standard installation procedure just doesn't cut it this time.
I've deployed Linux on many computers before and -with the exception of a few cranky Intel graphics cards-, I've never really had any extensive driver issues like this time. Most of the time everything "just works" -at least with some kind of generic driver, even if the component in question performs below par, it does still work.

This computer is mainly used for surfing and document/office work and even if the network card does not work at full performance it does not really matter, as long as it's actually working. Besides, the router that's within range in this part of the building is ancient and only supports 11mb/s anyway hehe.

You have already tried the things that I would of done.

I'm sorry, I don't know what else you could try.

Wait for other members to chime in and see what they say.

Use one or the other. one is blacklisted.
If used the open source one bcma and you installed the b43. then you need to blacklist it.

in the beginning the b43 came without firmware. Why because the program firmwarecutter
is under a different licence. None distributional. make you go download it.
So we kept a /etc/modprobe.d/blastlist.conf file.
choose your module.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/broadcom_wireless

now at any time you can go bakck and
sudo gedit /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.conf

this will assure at boot those do not load.
now b43 will load.
mine for my old old old laptop
https://mxlinux.org/wiki/hardware-ne...adcom-wireless

1 members found this post helpful.

Thanks for helping Drakeo.

if op still has problems, please provide the info requested here.

What's the output of ???

EDIT: You'll need a root terminal for above command or prepend with sudo

marvo:

When you have time please run those commands in post #7 and #8 that ondoho and TheEzekielProject posted for you.

Post the output here.

I'd also check if this system is part of the issue with mint and uefi bios's.

RF-kill could be a hardware or software switch

I also had such issues. I think i changed something in the kernel also

You need the proper kernel setting, proper kernel module and proper hardware id. Sometimes you need to patch the kernel for the proper hardware id also. And you need to know how to setup wireless also.
edit: reading @ post #5. you also need the firmware for the wifi card

Sorry for the late answer guys, have been some busy weeks lately.
The computer does have UEFI and as jefro suggested, there might be some issues regarding this, not sure.

At the time it had a dual boot configuration with win10, and with the recent meltdown/spectre issues MS pushed an update that rendered the entire computer usesless. At least one BSOD every few minutes, and sometimes it crashed during boot as well.

I got so fed up with this, and to be able to actually use this thing (Especially my GF who uses this partucular computer the most) i disabled everything UEFI and enabled legacy BIOS only. Formatted the drive and installed a Win7 ultimate and permanently disabled windows update to avoid any meltdown-patches that might screw it up again. For some reason the pre-installed win 10 home license also worked on the 7 Ultimate... Weird.

Bottom line is that after getting rid of win10 the computer now works better than ever, and my GF has decided to just leave it like this for now.
Maybe I'll experiment further another time, who knows?

Anyway, thanks for all your suggestions, much apreciated!

did you copy the extracted (fwcutter) firmware to /lib/firmware/b43/ ??? AKA the location the module loads it from. Having something is not the same as "using" it.