The other day I installed Ubuntu on a notebook and noticed that there was no wireless driver available in the “Restricted Driver” manager program in Ubuntu. Switching to dmesg I noticed a message suggesting I download b43-fwcutter and follow the advice on a link to the broadcom firmware. That link suggested that when b43-fwcutter was downloaded it would take care of installing the broadcom firmware, a statement that turned out not to be true among Ubuntu and Lubuntu. There are actually two programs required:
- b43-fwcutter
- firmware-b43-installer
The second program might be slightly different if you have an older broadcom firmware which requires firmware-b43legacy-installer instead of the firmware-b43-installer.
Lubuntu Wireless
To install these type:
sudo apt-get install b43-fwcutter firmware-b43-installer
It’s the second command that does the fetching of the firmware. Without even restarting you should be up and going.
Quick update for 12.04. You have to blacklist the broadcomm wireless before booting the live CD. Use:
b43.blacklist=yes