[SOLVED] Broadcom BCM4312 driver

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.

Code:

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

Code:

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.

Code:

sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source

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

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

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!

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

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! )