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I was a bit disappointed when It came to my attention that the Network Controller in my DI15 is Broadcom, which don’t have any free drivers. Somebody told me that I may have to install NDISwrapper and use the windows driver to make it work. I have googled a lot for the howtos of installing and using NDISwrapper. From a blog I got the information that NDISwrapper not needed any more for Broadcom adapters, there are driver packages available for various GNU/Linux Distros, but are non-free. The only advantage is that we don’t have to go for the ugly windows stuff.

RPMs for Broadcom 802.11 wireless drivers are now available in the rpmfusion repository of fedora 10. All we have to do is 2-3 simple steps and here is what I have done in my system.

1) Enable the rpmfusion repository

You have to enable the rpmfusion repository using the command

sudo rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm

2) Update the repo and install the driver package

The package we have to install is broadcom-wl and it depends on the package kmod-wl

sudo yum update
sudo yum install broadcom-wl

3) Reboot the system

When the system boots up, network manager will then detect the Broadcom wireless device and you will be able to connect to the wireless network through it

NB: Make sure that the “broadcom” kernel module is loaded. if not, add a line “modprobe broadcom” in /etc/rc.modules (In debian or debian based distros add a line “broadcom” in /etc/modules)

Please post your comments/suggestions here

As committed by Dell, the laptop came to me today evening just after 9 days from the confirmation of the order. The order was placed 6th March(Friday) and it confirmed on 10th. I got the confirmation mail with a committed delivery period of 10 days. So it should reach me on 20th.

Two days later, on 12nd March I got a mail from Dell saying that there is a delay in the production and the delivery may slip for one week. I contacted Javed and he clarified that the delay is due to shortage of part.

Yesterday I got another mail from Javed saying that the shipment out scanned to Dart Apex on 15th and is now on the way to Trivandrum. By today morning 11AM I got call from the DHL office asking for a convenient time to hand over the shipment. They brought it to my office by 4PM.

Soon after returning from office I unpacked it. It was an all black lappy with glossy finish but with a pre installed crap. I have overwritten Vista with Fedora 10. Now just completed installation and its working fine. I have to fine tune  it later

Today morning I just placed an order for a Dell Laptop at their site. The model I chose was Dell Inspiron 15. Spec Intel core2duo processor 2GHz, 2GB DDR2, 250GB HDD and 15.4″ widescreen display for a sum of 36K. By afternoon a marketing manager from Dell, Javed Aslam contacted me for the confirmation. I confirmed the order and paid for it with my friend’s credit card. According to him the payment will confirmed within two days. The laptop will be delivered with in 10 working days after the confirmation of payment.

Uhmm… Waiting for it patiently…