[SOLVED] Broadcom BCM4312 driver

[plutocrat]

I had problems with a Broadcom Wifi driver in Zorin 7 and 8 on a Dell Vostro 1400 laptop, so I thought I'd mention it here. During install the drivers weren't detected so Wifi wasn't working on the first reboot. I inserted an ethernet cable and did an apt-get update and an apt-get upgrade. Still no Wifi.

This is the adapter in question.

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lspci | grep Network
0c:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY (rev 01)

There are two drivers available for it. The first is the open source driver, recommended for the LP-PHY chip (low power). I installed this with

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sudo apt-get firmware-b43-lpphy-installer

(its also in the software center - search for b43). That worked for a while, but I found that it kept dropping the signal. I suspected it might be related to power management, so I tried to install the other opensource driver firmware-b43-installer, but that wouldn't install as it told me I needed the lpphy version.

OK, so then I tried the closed source driver. This was the one that actually worked properly for me.

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sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

This driver automatically removed the open source driver when it installed.

[Wolfman]

Hi,

can we marked this as solved so anyone else searching the web for Broadcom info can see that you sorted it out yourself.

Regards Wolfman

[Swarfendor437]

Hi plutocrat, what would be helpful is if you made a [STICKY] in the How-to section but clearly mark it as how to install closed source driver for BCM .... for [Notebook/Desktop - Name and Model]!
That way it is clear that it worked for you with that particular model. Chipsets can change over time and various other factors may not work for others - that's where madvinegar comes in!

[plutocrat]

Don't really know how to do this but I mentioned the laptop model and put [solved] in the title. Not sure about stickies, as it seems that sometimes there are 2 pages of stickies to scroll through before you get to any real posts. Hoping the forum search / google indexing is good enough. Just trying to help out

[Swarfendor437]

No worries plutocrat! When you add to the 'How-to' Section you would need to go back and edit the post and at the bottom, select 'sticky' and add [STICKY] at the front - the newest ones always appear at the top!
(If I had my way I would design the How-To section differently! )