Kbuntu Feisty/Broadcom 4318 not activating

konfusionrave · 05-13-2007, 10:25 PM

Hello all

I am trying yet again to get Linux working on my laptop - hate windows and want the freedoms that Linux will give me.

I install Kbuntu Feisty Fawn, everything is amazing, and it sees that eth1 is my broadcom 4318. It just does not seem to activate for some reason. I have an acer aspire 5000 series, and it has a light on the front to indicate when the wireless card is active - it stays off

Any help is appreciated

masonm · 05-13-2007, 11:23 PM

While the broadcom driver bcm43xx is included, the firmware isn't as it's proprietary. You either have to use fwcutter to extract the firmware or use ndiswrapper.

In all honesty I've had much better results using ndiswrapper.

stealth_banana · 05-14-2007, 09:12 AM

I have a 4318 in this laptop, and have had no luck at all with it using the bcm43xx driver. I don't think I will be buying any more Broadcom products.

According to the devices section

http://bcm43xx.berlios.de/?go=devices

The 4318 is unstable at present, however I have absolutely no problem with using ndiswrapper.

Install ndisgtk if you don't want to muck about in the shell, and let it do it for you. Remember to add the line:

blacklist bcm43xx

to /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist

I use wifi-radar for managing the connections. It just works.