Somehow i always struggling with the broadcom wireless that i have. This is just coincidence that even after two LAPTOP i have changed, both them came with Broadcom wireless module.
The current laptop i have is a Lenovo Z500. Which equiped with Intel core i5 4200M/8GB RAM/120GBSSD/1THDD. Nowaday, you can get a 6th gen core i laptop with something around $600. Though my laptop still runs pretty fast compare to the 6th gen core i gadgets.
This is really off topic. Now today, my problem is to go through the bottleneck of no drivers exsisting in my laptop with my Ubuntu 15.10 to support.
There is a couple simple command i ran to check whats really going on with my wireless.
First, i kicked off with following command to see the result of what network card avaliable. (wireless modules.)
lspci -vnn | grep Network
Then i get the result as below:
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
Noted, above information is very important. In this case, it tells me the correct model and firmware that i have for my broadcom wireless module.
Then, here is the useful command for linux to configue wireless network.
iwconfig
lo no wireless extensions.
enp1s0 no wireless extensions.
The second line could be something similar but it could be different too… (I know some of my co-league would get eth0 for their module.)
Now, we are done with playing around and determining our wireless hardware. Let’s starting with the solutions to fix the wirless driver issue.
Remember the information we get above? The [14e4:4365] (rev 01) is something we would need to deceided which broadcome wireless module firmware we would need for installing with to support the wireless function.
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM43142 802.11b/g/n [14e4:4365] (rev 01)
Now, lets update the source list with:
sudo apt-get update
Then, we can also updat the ubuntu PCI iDs:
sudo update-pciids
Then below steps by step to install:
sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo reboot
Please follow below table to select the correct packages to install from.
| PCI.ID 14.04 LTS 15.10+ |
| ———————————————————————————— |
| 14e4:0576 Special Case #1 UNKNOWN |
| 14e4:4301 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4306 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4306 rev 02 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4306 rev 03 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4307 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4311 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4312 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4313 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4315 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4315 rev 01 firmware-b43-installer / Case #2 UNKNOWN |
| 14e4:4318 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4318 rev 02 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4319 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4320 rev 02 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4320 rev 03 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4324 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4325 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4328 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4329 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:432a bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:432b bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:432c bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:432d bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4331 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4335 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
| 14e4:4353 Special Case #1 UNKNOWN |
| 14e4:4353 rev 01 Special Case #1 UNKNOWN |
| 14e4:4357 Special Case #1 UNKNOWN |
| 14e4:4358 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4359 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4365 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4365 rev 01 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:43a0 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:43b1 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:43b1 rev 03 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4727 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:4727 rev 01 bcmwl-kernel-source bcmwl-kernel-source |
| 14e4:a962 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43-installer |
After that the system reboots and hoepfully your wireless card will come up like mine. Otherwise, you can also try below:
sudo modprobe -r b43
sudo modprobe b43
sudo rfkill unblock all
if you have successfully installed the driver, You will happy to see below screens.
