I'm struggling to get my WiFi working on an old laptop after installing Fedora KDE Plasma 42. I have a Broadcom BCM4352 WiFi chip and no matter what I try, the driver won't work. I've installed the latest RPMs, disabled secure boot, and tried various drivers, but nothing seems to help. I even managed to use WiFi on Ubuntu before but had to switch to Fedora after some system issues. Any advice on getting my WiFi up and running?
3 Answers
Unfortunately, Broadcom drivers on Linux can be pretty hit or miss. It sounds like your card may not be fully supported by the existing drivers out there. If you're open to it, you might consider switching to a different wireless adapter or getting a USB WiFi adapter. They tend to work much better with Linux.
First, you can temporarily use an Ethernet cable to get online and run this command: `sudo dnf install broadcom-wl`. If that doesn’t work, try `broadcom-sta` instead. Just make sure you add the RPM Fusion non-free repositories to your system first — you can find the instructions on their website. After installing the driver, restart your machine and see if your WiFi works then!
I tried that method too, but it still didn't work for me. I keep getting the same message that the driver is downloaded but no WiFi access. I'm stuck with Ethernet only.
If you want to stick with Fedora, you could try following these steps for better driver installation: 1) Download the latest STA driver from the Broadcom site and extract it. 2) Unload the current driver with `sudo modprobe -r wl`. 3) Remove the current driver package with `sudo apt-get remove bcmwl-kernel-source`. 4) Install the new driver with `make && sudo make install`. 5) Finally, load it back with `sudo modprobe wl`. Give this a shot and see if it helps!
Yeah, the issue is frustrating because it worked seamlessly on Ubuntu before the update. But I'm really not keen on switching back to Ubuntu right now.