Broadcom provides Linux drivers for most of its wireless chip sets. Prior to the release of official drivers from Broadcom, the open source software community had various workarounds. Some people used Windows drivers through ndiswrapper. Others used fwcutter.
STEP 1: Enable the RPM Fusion repositories
# rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm
# rpm -ivh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm
STEP 2: Update the system
# yum update -y
STEP 3: Install the Broadcom wireless driver
# yum install kmod-wl-PAE -y
Restart the computer. Network manager must now show the available wireless networks.
Notes:
- Make sure that laptop wireless switch is on.
- If you have previously tried installing fwcutter or Broadcom Windows driver via ndiswrapper blacklist these drivers. The steps described in this article has been tested on fresh Fedora 12 install.
- Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g (rev 01) wireless chip set was used for testing
- To view the chip set details run the command ‘lspci’
- If you do not have a PAE kernel, use the command.
# yum install kmod-wl -y