Installing a Driver
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So i just installed trisquel and have been trying to get the internet to work. I figure my wireless card isnt working because no connections show up. I have a Broadcom Corporation BCM43224 802.11a/b/g/n (according to lscpi). I think i have found the driver at the following website: http://www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php. My question is what do i do with the downloaded content. I have a 64 bit computer running trisquel 5.0 64bit as well. so if you can explain very detailed for a person who doesnt know anything about linux that would be great so i can get on the internet and start using trisquel to its full capacity
I am a member!
Hi,
Download the appropriate '.zip' file. Place the file onto some folder
of you machine running Trisquel. Open the terminal and extract the
contents with
"tar -zxf",
followed by the file name; best type part of the name and hit 'tab',
letting the shell complete the name. After extraction, a folder will
result. Enter this folder, with the terminal or the file manager. Look
for a file with a name like "README"; this will have instructions for
installing your driver.
HTH,
Dave
As was mentioned, the driver does not respect freedoms so we cannot encourage its installation. I have a similar issue on my notebook's internal Wi-Fi card (made by Intel, though, not Broadcom) so what I did was purchase an inexpensive external card - quite a large number of those have free software drivers that work wonderfully.
If you read the license file this is a non-free driver. We can't help you with installing non-free software. Your wireless card isn't working because it requires a non-free driver. Not because Trisquel isn't at full capacity or anything like that.
I am a member!
I gave her general instructions on opening and installing from
tarballs. Ideally, we wouldn't have to help people install non-free
software. Would we prefer she not use Trisquel at all than use a driver
that may not pass the purity test? This machine has an AMI bios; I'll
be sure never to mention it again.
Best Regards,
Dave Hunt
On 10/06/2011 06:42 PM, name at domain wrote:
> If you read the license file this is a non-free driver. We can't help
> you with installing non-free software.
Hey Dave,
I wasn't trying to call you out or anything. As to your question you are providing a false dichotomy. S/he has more than the two choices of not use Trisquel or use a driver that "may not pass the purity test".
I noticed that the OP posted another thread here they said in that post that they would be ok getting another wireless card that would work with free software. That in fact is the ideal solution (or reverse engineering the non-free drivers and releasing free ones).
But yes we love it when people use Trisquel. However at the same time we can't make compromises and help people install non-free software for a few reasons. Firstly it would violate the guidelines for a free distro and we would lose our FSF endorsement. Secondly, the compromises are potentially never ending. Examples include: I need photoshop for school, My printer requires a non-free driver, I can't watch hulu without flash.
As far as the BIOS thing goes I also unfortunately have a non-free BIOS. I pulled this computer out of a dumpster so I didn't have a choice on the BIOS. However the BIOS and the O/S are different. We are fighting for a free OS and people are also fighting for a free bios but Trisquel itself is concerned with just the OS side of things.
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