So, I'm not necessary new to Linux, I just never took the time to learn it, so please, bare with me.
I just swapped out one of my wireless cards from one computer to another. This wireless card in question would be a "Broadcom BCM4321 (14e4:4329)" or actually a "Netgear WN311B Rangemax Next 270 Mbps Wireless PCI Adapter", but that's not important. I've tried (but probably screwed up in the process) installing the "wl" , "b43" and "brcmsmac" drivers, or at least I think I did. Currently I have only the following drivers loaded:
eugene@EugeneS-PCu:~$ lsmod | grep "brcmsmac\|b43\|ssb\|bcma\|wl"
b43 387371 0
bcma 52096 1 b43
mac80211 630653 1 b43
cfg80211 484040 2 b43,mac80211
ssb_hcd 12869 0
ssb 62379 2 b43,ssb_hcd
The main issue is that with most of the drivers available that I've installed, they will find my wireless network but, they will only stay connected for about a minute with abnormally slow speed and then all of a sudden disconnect. Currently, the computer is hooked into another to share it's connect so that I can install drivers from the internet instead of loading them on to a flash drive and doing it offline.
If anyone has any insight to the problem, that would be awesome. If not, I'll probably just look up how to install the Windows closed source driver.
Edit 1: Even when I try the method here, as suggested when this was marked as a duplicate, I still can't stay connected to a wireless network.
Edit 2: After discussing my issue with @Luis, he opened my question back up and told me to include the tests/procedures in the comments. Basically I did this:
- Read the first answer of the link above when this question was marked as duplicate which involved installing removing
bcmwl-kernel-sourceand instead installfirmware-b43-installerandb43-fwcutter. - No change of result and contacted Luis in the comments, who then told me to try the second answer which involved removing my previous mistake and installing
bcmwl-kernel-source - Now the Network Manger (this has happend before, but usally I fixed it by using a different driver) even recognizes WiFi exist (both non-literal and literal). Luis who then suggested
sudo rfkill unblock all rfkill unblock alldidn't return anything, so I decide to trysudo rfkill list all. Returns nothing (no wonderrfkill unblock alldid nothing).- I enter
lsmod | grep "brcmsmac\|b43\|ssb\|bcma\|wl"and that returns nothing. Try loading the driver by entering
sudo modprobe b43and trylsmod | grep "brcmsmac\|b43\|ssb\|bcma\|wl"again. Returns this:eugene@Eugenes-uPC:~$ sudo modprobe b43 eugene@Eugenes-uPC:~$ lsmod | grep "brcmsmac\|b43\|ssb\|bcma\|wl" b43 387371 0 bcma 52096 1 b43 mac80211 630653 1 b43 cfg80211 484040 2 b43,mac80211 ssb_hcd 12869 0 ssb 62379 2 b43,ssb_hcd
So to recap: Currently Network Manager doesn't recognize Wireless exists, b43 drivers are loaded and I've currently hardwired a connect from my laptop to the computer that's causing this.
Edit 3: So I just decided to try again to install bcmwl-kernel-source. It was able to find my network and it tried to connect. However, in never really succeeded and kept asking me for the network pass phrase. I give it the correct one every time but it keeps asking about three times and then stops trying. At this point I'm starting to research how to use ndiswrapper but haven't had any luck with that either.
Edit 4: After crying in a corner for about a month, I've decided to do a fresh install of Ubuntu and install the Broadcom STA drivers (wl.ko) right off their website. It does indeed find networks and seems to know how to connect to them, however, It will connect to them for a few minutes with very slow connection speed and then just drop. That was with the Wicd Network Manager too, with just plain old network-manager, it will keep asking for my password to connect to the network never actually connecting to the network.
