Has anyone successfully built a working driver based on broadcom's code for a 2.6.18.* kernel? I'm sick of trying to hack their junk, and kinda need to get wireless on a Dell Inspiron 5150 fast. I haven't found another thread with a solution (but I'd welcome seeing one if it exists!)

So far, I've downloaded their windows driver .exe, unzipped it (it's just a zip file), rpm -vih the source rpm package, cd'd to /usr/src/packages, rpmbuild -bb SPECS/bcm5700.spec and found it won't build. I'm now staring in dismay at the list of errors (they're all code errors, like undeclared variables being used, structures missing stuff) and wondering if anyone's already done the hard work and debugged their mess and built the kernel module? And wants to provide a link to the module driver such that I can just download it? Pretty please?

Apparently on Ubuntu this broadcom chip (the 4306 chip) works right works right out of the box? Trouble is, I'm trying to do this with suse - would the kernel module be around somewhere ubuntu-related for me to just pick it up that way?

Ah, finally got some joy out of the fwcutter project in Fedora 8 (gnome). Now if only I could figure out why when I try to connect to the 128-bit hex WEP network in question with the correct key, the network manager icon churns over a few times, and then asks me for the key again.

I know I have it right; I have another computer that I'm typing on right now that I can check it on. Any ideas on why it'd do this? Or why ifconfig doesn't even list my wireless device, but the network manager does?

I think I should add a little more information for anyone to be able to help me:

iwconfig eth1 isn't helping; it returns "eth1 doesn't exist". I'm wondering, if it "doesn't exist", how the network manager is managing to do an `iwlist eth1 scan` (or whatever it does) to find the network, and why it would prompt me for the encryption key...

In the "Network configuration" tool, when I'm prompted to add a new device type (the only thing that I'm seeing right now is the eth0), I select wirless connection, and then I'm only offered a choice of one wireless device: "Other Wireless Card". The list of adapters only offer one Broadcom adapter (the "Tigon3") which isn't mine.

lspci (after adding /sbin to the $PATH?!) gives:
02:02:0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)

So, I'm stuck at this point.

Sorry, but can you clarify -

Are you trying to get a card based on a bcm4306 chip to work? Or a card based on a bcm5700 chip? Because, unless I'm reading the broadcom site wrong, the bcm5700 is a "high-performance 10/100/1000BASE-T Ethernet LAN controller", whereas the bcm4306 is an 802.11g (wireless lan) controller

If you are trying to get a bcm4306 working, then I have to ask if you absolutely need a 2.6.18.* kernel, because as of 2.6.24, broadcom bcm43xx support is built directly into the kernel: http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43

All that aside, I've found the various network managers to be rather flaky, so I just use wpa_supplicant to handle all that stuff, since it can deal with all access points now.

Sorry this is taking so long, I have been procrastinating over playing with it again, since it's frustrating.

Thanks for the kernel tip. Yes, it's a bcm4306 chip. Thus:

Which major stable linux distro can I use to set up a basic webserver, that has a 2.6.24 kernel, and is likely to work out of the box? I promise I'm not a lazy person, it's just that I really don't want to spend time working on a box that just has to do one little job and then will be taken away from me immediately (and reformatted, deleting any work I'd put in on it).

I understand completely, though I am tempted to say that you're working with the wrong OS if that's what you want

I'm pretty sure the next Ubuntu release, Hardy Heron, is using a version of 2.6.24, and I think that it autoconfigures when you install.