I just read that Broadcom has open-sourced their wireless adapter drivers and was curious if this would have any affect on my Dell XPS M1330 which sometimes has flaky wifi.
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6 Answers
You can use lshw to show information on all devices in you system, forinstance what driver the device uses, this information will look something like this:
*-network
description: Wireless interface
product: PRO/Wireless 2200BG [Calexico2] Network Connection
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:0b:02.0
logical name: eth1
version: 05
serial: 01:22:ff:00:11:99
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: pm bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=ipw2200 driverversion=1.2.2kmprq firmware=ABG:9.0.5.27 (Dec 12 2007) ip=192.168.2.100 latency=64 link=yes maxlatency=24 mingnt=3 multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11g
resources: irq:21 memory:b4001000-b4001fff
In the line starting with configuration: it says driver=ipw2200 which mens my wireless uses the ipw2200 kernel driver this can in turn point you to weather you will (in time) benefit from this release. As far as i know all the broardcom network drivers have been released, this means that if you use any broardcom driver now it will in time (properly) get better supported.
answered Sep 10, 2010 at 21:35
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I'd add to Source Lab's excellent answer that you can show only network devices using "lshw -C network".– user8979Commented Feb 24, 2011 at 21:09
lspci should have an entry for your wireless adapter, including the manufacturer.
The Ubuntu help page for the Dell XPS M1330 suggests it's an intel wifi chipset.
Intel Next-Gen Wireless-N Mini-card
But the lspci shows up a broadcom device:
09:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation Unknown device 1713 (rev 02)
0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Unknown device 4229 (rev 61)
Admittedly that says it's an ethernet adapter but it's not uncommon to have multi-purpose chipsets in these things. So... I'm not sure.
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That's just the ethernet card, the Intel card is the wifi chip Commented Feb 3, 2012 at 23:19
If you're not too squeamish, you could take the panel off that's covering up the card on the back. Dell does a good job of making cards like that pretty accessible.
My wife has a Dell Studio 17 and the wireless went out, so I replaced the card. It says right on the card that it's an Intel.
Oh! and don't break anything...and don't blame me if you do...and all that disclaimer stuff. :)
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1I would advise against actually voiding the warranty on your laptop - there are pragmatic ways to find out your card's chipset. Commented Sep 10, 2010 at 22:26
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I could be wrong, but I don't think it would void the warranty to take the cover off of the card and just look at it. There's a panel on the bottom specifically for accessing the card. and you don't have to take it out. the sticker is right there.– HughHCommented Sep 30, 2010 at 17:01
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Well sometimes the card has a Broadcom chipset but Dell would then brand it as a 1501, etc with a huge sticker or whatever. And then you've got confusion.!– gontaduCommented Apr 28, 2011 at 13:19
AFAIK, the open-sourced drivers will only be available for new Broadcom cards, so it probably will not support older cards, such as the notorious BCM4311.
The currently supported firmwares are BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225.
Open a terminal
Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal
At the $ prompt, type:
username@computer:~$ lspci | grep -i broadcom
That command will list your PCI devices and the grep statement will list any Broadcom devices from that list. If you have a Broadcom device, your output will look something like this:
06:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705_2 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
