Feisty Wireless, It’s Good!
Wow. This is the first time I’ve actually said wow (in a positive way) when it comes to Linux wireless. Basically, it almost just worked!
Here’s the thing. I have a bcm4306 (rev 03) wireless card in this lappy, I have NEVER been able to maintain a wireless connection to my AP for long periods of time using the bcm43xx kernel driver and firmware (either found or extracted by myself). I’ve always had good luck with ndiswrapper and this card, and that’s just how I’ve gotten things going. Until now.
I wanted to leave my Feisty install as slick as possible which means leaving the NetworkManager (NM) integration as is. I figured I would just install ndiswrapper, get my card recognized and then let NM take over. I was just going to stick with ndiswrapper as it had never kicked me before. Well, ndiswrapper decided to kick me. grrr. I found that I only connected to my AP about half of the time and had weak, weak, weak signal when using ndiswrapper. I knew everything was working properly because when I booted to Edgy, things worked as expected.
I tried bringing the interface up and down, changing driver versions, using modprobe to remove/add the ndiswrapper module, all to no avail. I eventually said, ok.. Let’s try something else. I did a little googling and found that others were singing the praises of NM and the kernel driver. I just wanted it to work, so I reversed everything I did to get ndiswrapper working and installed bcm43xx-fwcutter. During the install I was asked if I wanted to download the firmware for the card (I forget how it was worded), I said yes. Less for me to do, and who knows.. Maybe they (the bcm43xx-fwcutter ppl I presume) know better than I about what firmware versions work “best”.
Initially I was unable to associate with my AP (modprobing, wishing, hoping… nothing worked) so I restarted the machine (the tried and true not-fix for everything) and found myself being prompted for my AP’s password (actually it was the password for my Gnome Keyring which feeds NM the pass for my AP). Lordy, lordy!! If I wasn’t connected right up to my AP with proper signal strength, I’ll eat this lappy!
Right now, I’m LOVING Feisty Fawn. She is one helluva sexy young deer who is doing wonders with this notebook.
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