Broadcom Wireless on Fedora 10

RPMs for the Broadcom 802.11 STA Wireless Driver are now available from the rpmfusion.org repos for Fedora 8, 9 and 10.

This is an official-release of Broadcom's IEEE 802.11a/b/g/n hybrid Linux device driver for use with Broadcom's BCM4311-, BCM4312-, BCM4321-, and BCM4322-based hardware. This driver also supports the incorrectly identified BCM4328 chipset which is actually a BCM4321 or BCM4322 chipset.

Previously I explained how to build the Broadcom STA driver from source but now the installation and updates can all be taken care of using yum and the rpmfusion non-free repository. Just follow these two simple steps:

1) Enable the rpmfusion non-free repository.

The broadcom-wl and wl-kmod RPMs that we need are in the rpmfusion non-free repository which also requires the rpmfusion free repository. To enable these repos in Fedora simply do this:

su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-stable.noarch.rpm\
http://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-stable.noarch.rpm'

2) Update and install the driver package

Now that you have the appropriate repository enabled, to install the driver package we first ensure that we have the latest updates and then install the "broadcom-wl" package which will bring with it the required "kmod-wl" package:

su -
yum update
yum install broadcom-wl

3) Make a couple of adjustments

At this stage you should reboot and provided you have Network Manager running (default setting for F10) it should detect your Broadcom wireless device and you should be able to connect to your wireless network.

If you're having problems then it is likely some conflict between Network Manager and the network service. To ensure that Network Manager can use the wireless go to System > Administration > Network and select the wireless device (if it's not there then this doesn't apply to you). Edit the device and check "Controlled by Network Manager" and "Activate device when computer starts". Close Network Configuration, save changes and then reboot.

You should also read the license and readme which are located in /usr/share/doc/broadcom-wl-5.10.27.6/

4) Enjoy your wireless!

That's all there is to it. At this stage you may need to reboot (if you didn't already) in order to enable the new driver and any new kernel that was installed during the update.

When future kernels are released a simple "yum update" command should install the new kernel and also pull in the updated Broadcom driver for that new kernel.

Share and Enjoy!