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Can somebody help me install the broadcam STA wireless driver? I'm new to Ubuntu and have been stuck for awhile trying to install the Broadcom Wireless driver.

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    You should give us more detail about your problem. From my experience, the broadcom STA wireless driver is easily installable from the "additional drivers" menu.
    – Frantisek
    Nov 15, 2011 at 3:21
  • Could you be little bit clear on what issue you have ? please paste the output of lspci -vnn | grep 14e4 Nov 15, 2011 at 4:14
  • could update your post with this information lshw -C network
    – hhlp
    Nov 15, 2011 at 12:22

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Click the gear/power icon at the upper-right corner of the screen, and click System Settings.... This brings up the System Settings window (also called the GNOME Control Center). Under Hardware, click Additional Drivers. A dialog box will come up that says "Searching for additional drivers..." and then the Additional Drivers window will come up to suggest drivers you can install for hardware on your machine.

If you have a Broadcom b43 wireless chipset and you don't see the Broadcom STA driver there, or you do see it there but, when you enable it, it doesn't work, then (if applicable) go back into Additional Drivers and disable the Broadcom STA driver, and then install firmware-b43-installer as described here (or in the Software Center).

If you're running a version of Ubuntu prior to 11.04, then Additional Drivers is accessed in System > Administration (from the menus in the top panel, near the left of the top of the screen).

If you're running a version of Ubuntu prior to 10.10, then b43-fwcutter should be installed instead of firmware-b43-installer.

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In recent versions of Ubuntu and Debian, installing the firmware-b43-installer package will handle everything for you:

http://apt.ubuntu.com/p/firmware-b43-installer. You will be asked to automatically fetch and install the firmware into the right location. Again, you will need an internet connection.

Ubuntu Community Documentation

Ubuntu also has a page detailing the process of installing Broadcom wireless drivers on their community documentation. If you have internet access on the device that you want to install the b43 driver onto, follow this link. If you do not have internet access on the device that has a b43 supported broadcom wireless chipset and would like to use b43, follow this link instead:

Note that you can only follow one of the two guides, not both.

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  • Gaurav_Java: please use links like the one I provided instead. It is not necessary to enter commands to install packages. :) Nov 15, 2011 at 23:45
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I had a Broadcom wireless chip in my old laptop. It worked pretty well with an old Ubuntu, I forget which, but started to drop out really badly when I upgraded - 9.10 maybe - even though the driver appears to be working fine.

I solved the problem by buying a USB wireless dongle, and upgraded to 802.11n at the same time. Just make sure the dongle is compatible!

That said, it's possible that my real problem was a coincidental hardware issue.

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