Mintdrivers

[Mike Easter]

I have a laptop w/ Broadcom BCM43228 wifi. I have posted here in the
past about interesting experiences getting the appropriate wl driver
installed, as numerous linux distro/s do not solve the wifi live boot
out of the box. MX Linux does.

I recently discovered that I can boot a live Mint Linux Cinnamon 20.2
which live boot fails to solve the bcm43228, so the wifi is inop just
like almost all others.

LM live default has a 'Driver Manager' which package is named
'mintdrivers' from the Mint repo/s.

That driver acts like a 'black box' no user configuration available, the
app just runs (python underneath) and reports if there are alternate
driver available for some device.

In the case of the BCM43228, the DM provides the options 'do not use
this device' or to install a proprietary BCM package for wl. If the
proprietary package is installed, then the live system 'immediately' has
operational wifi w/ the correct wl driver, no necessity to reboot or
restart a network manager or logout/in.

That is a very handy feature, considering how many distro/s fail to
handle the bcm43228 ootb. And, it is installed by default in the live
boot, therefore not requiring any kind of workaround ethernet connection
to get the wifi driver installed.

Since this particular feature is a 'mint thing'; I'm wondering if there
is an equivalent more generic thing, since it seems to be python based,
even a Qt based distro such as KDE Neon should be able to do the same thing.

For example, my understanding is that there is a kubuntu-driver-manager
/not/ installed by default in Neon which after installation would
provide a driver manager in settings which could do the same thing as
mintdrivers.

https://averagelinuxuser.com/things-to-do-after-installing-kde-neon-2020/
15 Things to do after installing KDE Neon (2021)

I haven't yet tested whether that driver manager works as well as Mint's
for this specific proprietary driver problem; this is about the wl
kernel module.


--
Mike Easter

[Mike Easter]

Mike Easter wrote:
> For example, my understanding is that there is a
> kubuntu-driver-manager /not/ installed by default in Neon which after
> installation would provide a driver manager in settings which could
> do the same thing as mintdrivers.

> I haven't yet tested whether that driver manager works as well as
> Mint's for this specific proprietary driver problem; this is about
> the wl kernel module.

I did some testing on the current KDE Neon. Very disappointing. I put
the problematic laptop w/ bcm wifi on ethernet to work on the driver
problem.

- the default Discover couldn't even find kubuntu-driver-manager
- I installed Muon; it couldn't either
- I then installed Synaptic; it found the driver manager and I
installed it
- the driver manager (from system settings) got 'stuck' in the
'collecting information about your system'; it never offered to do
something about the wifi driver as the mintdriver had done.
- yeah yeah; instead of muon & synaptic I could've (should've) sudo
apt install command


--
Mike Easter

[Mike Easter]

Mike Easter wrote:
> I did some testing on the current KDE Neon.  Very disappointing.

Here's the way to solve it 'directly' -- no driver manager.

Synaptic: (or other) install bcmwl-kernel-source (that is what shows up
in the mintdrivers result)

Then it is done. The wifi is working; no necessity to reboot or other.
The wifi APs are visible in the network manager.

--
Mike Easter

[dillinger]

This posted from KDE neon on a laptop with a BCM43228, this laptop never
was connected to ethernet and I never installed bcmwl-kernel-source
manually.
The install was a bit tricky though, IIRC I had to go back one step at
some point to make it connect to the web and download the latest updates
for everything.

[RonB]

I just replace the Broadcom WiFi card with an Intel one. In the old laptops
I use that's about $5 each. Even if you get the Broadcom WiFi cards to work
they're iffy and inconsistent. At least that's been my experience. Maybe
it's changed recently but I just figured it wasn't worth beating my head
against the wall to get these to "work" (sort of).

--
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A depression is when you lose yours. A recovery is
when Dr. Fauci loses his. — Gov. DeSantis

[J.O. Aho]

This reminds me about a HP laptop I had, I wanted to replace the
original broadcom with an intel one, I spent the money on the new wifi
card (at least it didn't cost many bucks), but sadly the kernel had a
whitelisted devices, only those were allowed at boot time and as I had
an AMD CPU, HP had decided that only the broadcom card was acceptable
(intel CPU version of the same computer could use intel wifi only).

There was a workaround which required you to disable one of the pins on
the wifi card to be disable during boot time and then enable it again
after early BIOS stage was finished. Another was to modify the BIOS so
that the wifi cards id was in the whitelist, but flashing BIOS you
needed a closed source operating system... ended up I used the broadcom
with the Ndiswrapper and the closed source OS driver.

It can be worth to check if the laptop you use uses whitelists for
devices, if that is the case it can be better to go for an USB based wifi.

--

//Aho

[RonB]

I read something about the whitelists with HP and Lenovo (I believe). I
almost exclusively use Dells and they seem to be a more open on this.

[Java Jive]

I have a number of Dells, and can't recall any problems with Linux and
WiFi on any of them that I've tried:
Inspiron 15RSE 7250 Good machine, but not tried to run Linux.
Latitude D600 Used to run Linux but too slow for Ub16
Precision M6300 Goodish machines, if somewhat heavy, Ub18
Precision M4300 Bad, don't buy 2nd-hand, now dead but was Ub16

--

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[J.O. Aho]

Yes, that tend to be within my experience too, but next laptop I get to
myself will be a Tuxedo, they have a number of nice candidates I could
consider, but at the moment don't have that much need of a replacement
for the Latitude E6220 I use when the desktop is occupied.

--

//Aho