Well, for whatever it's worth, the newer kernel's (2.6.21 and up, I believe) can be compiled for built-in support for Broadcom wireless. What this means is that if your kernel has the right setup, you don't need to use Ndiswrapper at all. To enable this may require some work, but I can guarantee that it can be done since I'm wireless right now. Here's a link to a howto on another forum: Broadcom howto

...but they probably won't. Most users couldn't install windows to save their life, let alone overcome the fear-factor of tackling a totally foreign O/S. If someone is willing to post a how-to on using the GUI to accomplish a task, I say "More power to 'em!"
The GUI is the future. We, the dinosaurs, will remain firmly ensconced in the halls of power with our mastery of the command line.

amivit,
I've got wireless on three pc's and always use the provided drivers with ndiswrapper. My favorite tutorial is the one here at LQ

http://www.linuxquestions.org/linux/...NDISWRAPPER_11

Didn't see your distro posted but anyway this should work. It's all command line but most is in "linux".

Hey, thanks for the replies. Updated distribution: openSUSE 10.2. Ill go and take a look at the guides now =)

Hey guys, I finally got it to work. Thanks to you =) .
I just used ndiswrapper to install the .inf file. The problem was I didn't configure the network setting right in YaST. But now it works perfectly, thx again.

This doesn't seem to be at all about the original post's content..well, to say something about it, the two last lines are total nonsense - if you ask me, GUI is everything but the future. Merely a link between what was before (ASCII menus) and what's coming in the future (something better than irritating graphical user interfaces).

To the OP: ndiswrapper should be pretty straightforward, but there are some versions that don't work with certain driver versions. Personally I don't get why, but one of my Broadcom drivers didn't work out with one oldish version of NDISwrapper (worked on older and newer than that, though). For Broadcom 43xx cards there's also the option to use the native bcm43xx kernel module along with FWcutter with which one can "cut" the "important parts" ("firmware" like they say) from a Windows driver and have bcm43xx driver use that to work out. Topic doesn't state which bcm wireless card you have, but anyway - NDISwrapper is not the only choice.

Well i finally got it to work to find dial up download speeds, then the wole laptop started going down hill....my new one is Core Duo with Interl chipset and intel wireless, works default in linux so i solved it with new laptop lol

I'm playing with Sidux, a distro based on Debian Sid meant for hard disk install. As Telemachos posted, the newer 2.6.x kernels come with a "bcm43xx" kernel module that seems to require some extra software to work correctly (via "apt-get install bcm43xx-fwcutter"). Only problem there is you have to be connected to the Internet to get that package, and the software it will subsequently download. (Of course, you could always plug in an ethernet cable physically attached to your network to do this.)

Point being, if you want to use ndiswrapper instead, and have your Windows *.inf and *.sys files handy, you have to first "rmmod" the existing bcm43xx module, or ndiswrapper won't work. So check (with "lsmod") to see if there's a bcm43xx module already loaded.

After nuking the existing kernel module, it's straightforward to configure ndiswrapper from the command line (or, in Sidux, you can use its GUI-based "siduxcc" Kcontrol module, "Network"), especially if you have a router that doles out IP addresses via DHCP.

# ndiswrapper -i /path/to/bcmwl5.inf
# modprobe ndiswrapper
# depmod -a
# iwconfig (to find out the name of your interface, e.g. eth1)
# iwconfig eth1 essid <your_network_name> key restricted <your_WEP_key>
# dhclient eth1