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There are a number of different types of drivers for Broadcom wireless chipsets that have different capabilties and features. Here are some examples:
| Driver | Description | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| brcmsmac/brcmfmac | Open-source kernel drivers | |
| b43, b43legacy and b44 | Reverse-engineered kernel drivers | |
| broadcom-wl | Proprietary Broadcom STA driver | Causes kernel drivers to be blacklisted |
| brcm80211 | Open-source kernel driver | |
| Various | Proprietary Windows drivers | Require Ndiswrapper |
For a Wireless device, go to the Linux Wireless site, select the appropriate device type (PCI, USB or PCMCIA) and click through to the table to find the latest information about your device. If you have an older Broadcom chipset, and want to use the native driver instead of using Ndiswrapper, you may have to enable the correct driver and suppress the others.
CLI method
This illustration uses the most frequent case of the common driver b43 that is blacklisted by default in MX Linux because it conflicts with the wl driver. NOTE: the same method could be used for the other kernel Broadcom drivers.
- Open this file in a root Thunar:
/etc/modprobe.d/broadcom-sta-dkms.conf
- Comment out (add a hash sign) to the first blacklist line so that it looks like this (bolded):
# wl module from Broadcom conflicts with the following modules:
# blacklist b43
blacklist b43legacy
blacklist b44
blacklist bcma
blacklist brcm80211
blacklist brcmsmac
blacklist ssb - Save and close the file.
- Open a terminal, become root, and enter this command to remove the competing wl:
modprobe -r wl
- Reboot.
GUI method
Carry out Steps 1 and 2 using the MX Broadcom Manager.