Broadcom wireless for Ubuntu 8.04

[ourheartsconviction]

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I'm pretty new to using repositories in Ubuntu, but I got my wireless to start working via the repositories, but I have been reading that Broadcom wireless is especially affected in this newest version of Ubuntu. I have heard that using ndiswrapper somehow speeds the wireless speed up. Can anyone verify this, and also how do I go about installing ndiswrapper to speed up my wireless.

Thanks!

[bigtomrodney]

Hey there, told you I'd drop by

The trick is that Broadcom cards aren't fully supported with an open source driver. Even though they use the official firmware they aren't yet making full use of it and so usually only reach speeds of 1-2Mbps even when directly beside the access point.

What ndiswrapper does is allows you to use your windows driver directly with a wifi card (NDIS is the network driver specification that Windows uses). What you will need to do is in the short term, plug your laptop directly into your router to allow you to get the software you need.

Launch System > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager and search for

• ndisgtk
• ndiswrapper-common
• ndiswrapper-utils-1.9

When these are installed you should be able to use ndisgtk to install your windows driver. You should find it under System > Administration ass Windows Wireless Drivers.

The downside to all of this is that an unusual bug has shown up in Ubuntu 8.04 that makes the other broadcom drivers and ssb load before ndiswrapper. You can get around this by creating a script to unload the others and load ndiswrapper. The details are here. I haven't found it necessary to remove the fwcutter package, though your mileage may vary.

That's the whistlestop version, feel free to ask any questions if you need any further information.

[ourheartsconviction]

thanks for that help, I didn't get a chance to work on it, but I will update if I run into any problems!