lenovo wifi card drivers?

[hexagondun]

Hello everyone,

In anticipation of ubuntu phone, I've decided to install lubuntu onto an old netbook I've have sitting around for quite a while now, the Lenovo s10-2. Figure that I better get comfortable a basic, ubuntu-based distro now as I've never really been successful with linux in the past.

after a quick few google searches, results are mixed as to whether or not my netbook is linux-compatible at all. On one hand they say that if it's broadcom, you're stuck; on the other, I see a few folks --forum threads and youtube vids-- using this netbook with ubuntu no problems. A friend mentioned ndiswrapper to me last night. Might this provide a solution? Any other ideas?


Thanks so much!

[Anghrist]

Have you tried:

sudo apt-get install b43-cutter

or

sudo apt-get firmware-b43-installer

You'll probably have to connect to a wired connection for this, but if I remember correctly one of these fixed an issue I had with my BroadCom card a few years ago.

Hope this helps!

[hexagondun]

Thanks so much for your quick reply!

sorry if this is a silly question:
After entering the first suggested command into terminal, it asks me for a sudo password. I tried to enter in my system password, but it wouldn't accept any input at all. I then disabled the sys password in hopes that it wouldn't prompt me next time, but, sure enough,it did. What do I do?

edit: so the sudo is just the password-- got it. but why won't it let me enter anything? going to go reboot and try again after disabling pword.

[Hadaka]

Hi, when you type in sudo and it asks for a password
the pasword you enter is not echo'd back. (you wont
see what you type) this is normal. I would suggest activating
your password for security. also, to determine what type
of wireless card you have and what drivers you need please copy
and paste this command...

lspci -nn | egrep '0200|0280'

thanks.

[hexagondun]

just realized that it was just invisible, but even so it was giving me an error. anyway, i had some funky stuff going on and after rebooting it wouldn't allow me to log in as admin as all...

...so i reinstalled lubuntu!

ill type those commands now. gotta go to the other room to hardwire the to the router

[hexagondun]

turns out i have the broadcom BCM4312. Quick google search yields loads of promising results with ndiswrapper, but im having problems with step 4, i think the error was "command does not exist" or something. any updates on these broadcom wifi cards?
is ndiswrapper the only way?

[Hadaka]

Hi, no dont load that driver, thats a last resort
driver to load. Your card is a broadcom 4312
that is just the card number,it doesnt relate to
the driver.There is a [14e4xxx] that determines
what driver you need. so please post the results of...

lspci -nn | egrep '0200|0280'

thanks

[hexagondun]

Hi, no dont load that driver, thats a last resort
driver to load. Your card is a broadcom 4312
that is just the card number,it doesnt relate to
the driver.There is a [14e4xxx] that determines
what driver you need. so please post the results of...

lspci -nn | egrep '0200|0280'

thanks

thanks so much for the guidance.

here's whatis displayed in term after i paste that command:


Lenovo-IdeaPad-S10-2:~$ lspci -nn | egrep '0200|0280'
02:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315] (rev 01)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller [10ec:8136] (rev 02)


thanks again!

[Bucky Ball]

Avoid ndiswrapper. The info you're looking at there is probably old as ndiswrapper is largely superseded for Broadcom via the b43 driver.

You need both b43-fwcutter AND firmware-b43-installer.

If you have ndiswrapper installed this may prevent success with the b43, or any other, wireless driver. Uninstall it totally.

[Hadaka]

Hi
BCM4312 802.11b/g LP-PHY [14e4:4315]

#removes ndiswrapper

sudo modprobe -rfv ndiswrapper
sudo apt-get remove --purge ndisgtk ndiswrapper*
sudo rm /etc/modprobe.d/ndis*
sudo rm -r /etc/ndiswrapper/*

#install

 sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe wl