Wireless, Broadcom

[Rick Bilonick]

On Sat, 2008-10-11 at 14:52 -0400, Bill Davidsen wrote:
> Jeroen de Haas wrote:
> 
> > There is a tutorial on setting up ndiswrapper on Fedora:
> > http://fedoramobile.org/fc-wireless/ndis-yum-livna . This text assumes
> > you have configured yum to use the livna repository (which does contain
> > the ndiswrapper packages) as explained in
> > http://fedoramobile.org/solved/post-install-solutions/yum-config/ . 
> > 
> I have very mixed feelings about using Windows drivers for much of anything, 
> perhaps too many urban legends about an IRQ coming in while the driver is 
> running in a privileged mode. There are new Broadcom drivers coming in the 
> future, but at the rate I see progress that might be after the stock market gets 
> back to 14000. :-(
> 
> An alternate solution, which I'm using, is to buy a USB wireless modem and use 
> that. Clearly not the optimal solution, but one which avoids the issues with 
> running NDIS drivers.
> 
> Consider this an alternate solution, not a statement that NDIS is evil. Well, 
> Fedora doesn't include it for various reasons, but many people disagree.
> 
> -- 
> Bill Davidsen <davidsen at tmr.com>
>    "We have more to fear from the bungling of the incompetent than from
> the machinations of the wicked."  - from Slashdot
> 

You might check the Broadcom website. They have released a native Linux
driver that works for many of their cards. I used it in Ubuntu 8.04 and
it works perfectly with the 4312 card in my HP 2133 mini-notebook. You
will have to determine whether it will work with Fedora (but I don't see
why it wouldn't).

Rick B.

P.S. If I could get Fedora 9 work with the HP 2133, I would likely still
be using Fedora on it. It worked OK with Fedora 8 - but Fedora 9 seems
to break everything and especially the LCD display - just CANNOT get a
useable LCD display (but displays just fine on the external VGA
monitor).