Broadcom BCM4313 Wireless Card Driver Problem
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Hi,
I installed the Trisquel 5.5. Wireless card doesnt work. I need your help.
Thanks.
I am a member!
This wireless card is not supported by Trisquel. Trisquel only supports free software compatible wireless cards. This card depends on proprietary firmware.
Depending on your laptop you may be able to replace the chip with an Atheros wireless card or alternatively a USB wireless card.
All hardware from http://libre.thinkpenguin.com/ is supported under Trisquel and other free software distributions (25% of the profits go to the Trisquel project).
If you let us know what brand the laptop is I can give you an idea as the likelihood of being able to replace the internal card. Toshiba, Dell, Lenovo, and HP laptops are a problem as these companies have been hostile to users freedoms in recent years. They ship systems with digitally restrictive BIOS software that prevents the use of third party wifi cards.
Our systems do not include any such restrictions, and whomever you go with we would advise that you not buy from the above companies.
Thanks Chris.
I want to use any %100 Free GNU/Linux distro. But my computer hardware does not allow this.. I deleted the Trisquel and installed Ubuntu. There was no alternative...
On 05/29/2012 09:17 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Thanks Chris.
>
> I want to use any %100 Free GNU/Linux distro. But my computer hardware
> does not allow this.. I deleted the Trisquel and installed Ubuntu.
> There was no alternative...
I learned this the hard way too. Next time, buy hardware that support
free software. That is the only way to fight back. You can check if your
hardware will let you install a diferent network card too, sometimes
it's as simple as changing cards, but some vendors won't allow it
(hardware lock). And graphics should be Intel or NVidia (at least some
models will work moderately well). It's always good to check with the
community first, though.
>There was no alternative...
There always is.
Thanks Chris..
lembas, can you show me? What is the solution without changing any hardware on my computer?
You could get a USB wifi card that works with linux-libre.
The link i linked is to h-node a hardware database of what does and does not work with all free software. The link I gave specifically shows a list of USB wifi dongles that should all work with Trisquel. You should be able to just plug one of those in and your wifi should work without changing any hardware.
I saw this URL http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php
Can I use the driver with Trisquel?
I am a member!
In the readme:
"You compile this source on your system and link with a precompiled binary file (wlc_hybrid.o_shipped) which contains the rest of the driver."
This appears to be even less free than your typical "open source" driver with non-free firmware. Broadcom is a company to avoid. There is some limited support for some broadcom chipsets in Trisquel though. Yours appears not to be one of them.
However I wouldn't recommend broadcom at the moment anyway. This is because the development team working on the free software broadcom driver advises against it at this time.
Broadcom did announce support for "Linux" some time ago although thus far I can't say we have seen a whole lot from it. Like others (such as AMD's ATI chipsets) it seems to have probably been largely a publicity stunt. However there is an alternative explanation. They just aren't putting sufficient resources into it. There is a free software driver for some chipset(s). I'm not sure if this has anything to do with Broadcom's support or not. If it does we may use/recommend Broadcom in the future.
It should be noted that companies do reverse course some times. Some go from doing a great job of supporting GNU/Linux and free software to doing a horrible job of it (think Creative).
Then there are others who have gone from not supporting "Linux" at all to providing excellent support.
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