My understanding is that the 2.6.32 kernel will have built in support for some Broadcom wireless chipsets.
How can I upgrade my kernel to try it out?
My wireless is working but it’s sort of flakey. Goes from working great to working slow and dropping the signal altogether.
Thank you
On 12/06/2009 11:46 AM, csm58 wrote:
>
> My understanding is that the 2.6.32 kernel will have built in support
> for some Broadcom wireless chipsets.
>
> How can I upgrade my kernel to try it out?
>
> My wireless is working but it’s sort of flakey. Goes from working
> great to working slow and dropping the signal altogether.
Support for some Broadcom chipsets has been built-in since 2.6.22 or
23. What 2.6.32 does is enable support of the BCM4312 with PCI ID of
14e4:4315.
You should check Webpin for availability of a kernel for your distro.
As you did not say which version you are running, I cannot be more
specific.
I’m running openSuSE 11.2, with KDE. Kernel is 2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop.
Wireless card is a Linksys WMP300N PCI adapter with the Broadcom BCM43XG chipset.
On 12/06/2009 02:16 PM, csm58 wrote:
>
> I’m running openSuSE 11.2, with KDE. Kernel is 2.6.31.5-0.1-desktop.
>
> Wireless card is a Linksys WMP300N PCI adapter with the Broadcom
> BCM43XG chipset.
The 802.11n chips are not supported by b43 - the native driver. You
need to use the Broadcom wl driver. As to its performance and
stability, it is closed source and we have no control over it.
Does this mean I’d have a more reliable connection with Wireless G?
On 12/11/2009 09:26 PM, csm58 wrote:
>
> Does this mean I’d have a more reliable connection with Wireless G?
Not necessarily. All I meant is that we cannot help with closed-source
drivers, other than getting it installed.
My experience is that connections with b43 are indeed more reliable
than those for wl, mainly because the wireless stack is much more
robust, but YMMV.
Mine is Broadcom BCM4328 and I am using the wl driver because it is not supported by b43 now. So far, I haven’t faced with any noticeable issues. (However, I will switch to the open-source driver the moment it is supported).
On 12/12/2009 02:06 AM, syampillai wrote:
>
> csm58;2086448 Wrote:
>> Does this mean I’d have a more reliable connection with Wireless G?
> Mine is Broadcom BCM4328 and I am using the wl driver because it is not
> supported by b43 now. So far, I haven’t faced with any noticeable
> issues. (However, I will switch to the open-source driver the moment it
> is supported).
I’m glad to hear that wl works for you. For some, it is not stable.
Yea, I may be lucky 
Also, I don’t like the ndiswrapper solution. That didn’t work when I tried it earlier on oS11.1. Not sure about any issues related to 64 bit environment.
On 12/12/2009 12:16 PM, syampillai wrote:
> Also, I don’t like the ndiswrapper solution. That didn’t work when I
> tried it earlier on oS11.1. Not sure about any issues related to 64 bit
> environment.
The 64-bit Windows drivers are not well tested. In any case, you are
better off with wl than using ndiswrapper.
In your opinion, would wl be even better if I were using 32 bit instead of 64 bit?
On 12/12/2009 07:56 PM, csm58 wrote:
>
> In your opinion, would wl be even better if I were using 32 bit instead
> of 64 bit?
No. Broadcom got that part right. In addition, there is not the
difference between 32- and 64-bit in Linux as there is in Windows.
Thanks for all your answers, I appreciate you taking the time to help.