So after trying to install different distros (Ubuntu Budgie 21.04, Pop OS 21.04) with no success, I decided to give elementary OS 6 a try (I had been running elementary OS 5.1). It installed, but the WiFi didn't show. Anyone know how to make this work?
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I found the answer by searching this forum. elementaryos.stackexchange.com/questions/28875/…. The only thing I didn't do is the following: "To prevent these modules from reloading on boot, create a new blacklist-b43.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the following contents: blacklist b43 blacklist bcma" I didn't do this because there was already a config file present (blacklist-bcm43.conf) with those specific blacklist comments along with others.– Rex MillerOct 20, 2021 at 5:39
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2 Answers
I had a similar issue on a MacBook Air and used the instructions on AsK Ubuntu
sudo apt update
sudo update-pciids
sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer
sudo apt install linux-firmware
sudo reboot
The kernal drivers should now show in App Center.
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@matigo thanks for your vigilance to ensure there are helpful and informative answers in this community.– katiedevOct 22, 2021 at 1:42
This is a cut and paste from the link I posted above.
Installing b43
This driver works pretty well, however it doesn't support 5GHz networks and during my usage I found it would drop the connection intermittently.
To install the b43 driver, run the following command in a terminal
apt install firmware-b43-installer
and rebooting eOS
Installing wl
This is the proprietary driver available from Broadcom, with full feature support. This hasn't been extensively tested by myself as I've only recently got this working. Debian's Mac documentation was extremely helpful.
Install your kernel's headers and the propietary driver sources:
apt install linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04 && sudo apt install broadcom-sta-common broadcom-sta-source broadcom-sta-dkms
(If you are not running Ubuntu 20.04 or Elementary OS 6, replace the linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04 package with linux-headers-$(uname -r). Do note that this alternative method requires you to fetch new headers manually when the kernel is updated, otherwise your WiFi will stop working)
Once installation is complete, unload the old kernel modules for the modem:
modprobe -r b43
modprobe -r bcma
To prevent these modules from reloading on boot, create a new blacklist-b43.conf file in /etc/modprobe.d/ with the following contents:
blacklist b43
blacklist bcma
At this point, you can reboot eOS.
Alternatively you can reload the wl kernel module and start using the WiFi adapter immediately:
modprobe -r wl
modprobe -r cfg80211
rfkill unblock
modprobe wl