Configuring Broadcom BCM4312 Wireless card in Fedora 10
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)
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