[ILUG] OpenSUSE 11 64bit on an inspiron 1501 - wifi query

[Conor Wynne]

On Sun, Mar 22, 2009 at 11:24 PM, Brendan Minish <bminish at minish.org> wrote:

> Hi Conor
>
> On Sun, 2009-03-22 at 23:02 +0000, Conor Wynne wrote:
>
>
> > The main concern is wifi. It is still in install stage (updating from
> > t'internet currently), so I'm just posting to see if anyone has tried it
> > already and has a nice howto.
>
> What wifi card and chipset is in there? Intel ones tend to be no
> problem, with others it varies.


lspci says:

05:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI
(rev 01)


>
> Occasionally it's just less pain (broadcom..) to swap the card out for
> an intel one, they are pretty cheap on ebay


I just got it working, it was dead easy -- worked first time round.
I guess I just expected it to be painful ;-0

I found a decent how to:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#fw-b43-new

Here's a run down :

wget http://bu3sch.de/b43/fwcutter/b43-fwcutter-011.tar.bz2
(extract and make it)

export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
sudo ../../b43-fwcutter-011/b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR"
wl_apsta_mimo.o

Lastly:

sudo /usr/sbin/install_bcm43xx_firmware

Then it magically apeared in network manager.

> I must say, KDE4 is very nice looking on it, the wife wants it on her
> > laptop now, that's saying something.
>
> KDE 4.2 is now very usable, I was a big fan of kde 3.x but 4.0 drove me
> to Gnome for a while. 4.2 has wooed me back -;
>
> > So anyone with a wifi howto, I'llkeep googling in the meantime, with my
> > bottle of chianti *hic*.
>
>
Solved by a bottle of Chianti reserva 2005 (Familae Piccini), lovely wine
that.
Must aquire more from my dad's cellar ;-0

Now what about the itunes replacement? What are the kids using these days?
Also pics and possibly video apps?

The machine is well more responsive then vista basic, no flashy flashy hdd
for starters. Bet the battery lasts longer too.

Regards
Conor.