Hello everyone! I'm a bit of a newbie here, and I'm hoping to get some advice regarding a frustrating issue I'm facing. I have an older HP Pavilion dv6000 laptop that has a Broadcom BCM4311 WiFi chipset. The problem is that I can only get WiFi to work on antiX 32-bit Base; any other distribution, including antiX Full, various Ubuntu and Mint versions, and Debian, just won't connect to WiFi at all. However, under Windows, everything works perfectly fine.
I've tried several solutions here: I installed the b43 and other firmware packages, attempted the broadcom sta dkms package, checked rfkill (and it's clear), yet I can't find a way to get WiFi to show up on those other Linux versions. I'd rather not stick with antiX 32-bit because I'm looking for something newer and more user-friendly like Linux Mint XFCE. Any ideas or guidance on what I can try next would be greatly appreciated. Thanks for taking the time to read this!
5 Answers
I had a similar issue with my Broadcom chipset on Linux Mint. It worked fine out of the box on antiX with the b43-pci-bridge driver after updating my router settings to WPA2 instead of WPA3. You might also want to explore MX Linux XFCE, as it often handles wireless connections better and shares code with antiX.
One approach would be to check which driver your working antiX setup is using and see if you can replicate that setup in another distro. Sometimes figuring out the exact driver can unlock compatibility for other distributions.
It's common for Broadcom chipsets to be tricky on Linux. If you haven't yet, try checking out the instructions from the Linux Mint forums that focus on these chipset issues. They have detailed steps that have helped many users, including me.
When troubleshooting WiFi issues like this, running 'sudo lshw -C network' can give you detailed information about your network hardware which might help explain why your chipset isn’t working on some distros. You might also want to check hardware compatibility lists or forums for your specific laptop model.
Have you tried using Driver Manager in Mint? It often suggests the right driver for Broadcom chipsets. If that doesn’t work, consider swapping for an Intel WiFi module like the AX200. They’re usually very reliable and work seamlessly across various Linux distros.
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