How can I install wireless drivers in Mint?

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

After failing to get myself online due to wi-fi driver issues (I have a Dell LT) I decided to resolve this problem by downloading the drivers from Broadcom's website.

hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-45_100_82_38.tar.gz is the full file name.

I then booted my LT from the Live CD and ran Mint 10 in demo mode. After extraction I have 2 folders on the desktop; src and lib as well as a plain text doc named makefile.

Does anyone know how I can install the drivers from above-mentioned folders?

PS I would like to eventually have a dual boot setup with XP and Mint but don't yet want to install Mint within Windows if my wi-fi will not work.

[kendall.a]

In both Peppermint and in Mint, I had to connect initially to my dsl modem via ethernet and then go to "additional hardware drivers". Both Mint and Peppermint found my wireless card and I could "activate" the drivers for that card. My drivers were then automatically installed and I could then connect to my wireless network.

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

Hi kendall,

I have tried the activate driver via additional hardware drivers route but this does not work with my setup. All the same, thanks for your suggestion.

[Ritho]

torres can you give me the link to where you downloaded the diver file so I can look at it?

[Ritho]

Usually with a file like this you want to put it in a folder open a terminal and do the following. (Some of this you have already done, but I am including it for completeness)

1. Un-tar the package using the following command and options

tar xzvf hybrid-portsrc_x86_32-45_100_82_38.tar.gz

2. Then compile the drivers.

make

3. Then you will have to use the "insmod" command to install the resulting compiled driver. however there may be generic broadcom drivers you will have to remove first using rmmod.
I can't give you more details until I look at the file.

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

Hi Ritho,

The link is: www.broadcom.com/support/802.11/linux_sta.php

FYI I downloaded the 32 bit version.

I am not very au fait with the Terminal, in fact I generally dislike anything that involves coding/command line instructions, so anything that I need to do will have to be a step-by-step procedure!

Thanks for your input.

[Ritho]

Torres at the link you provide is also a readme.txt you can download. Third file in the list. It contains install instruction.

If you can't make heads or tails of it, let us know. I am heading of to sleep and will check back in the morning.

[torres-no-tan-magnifico]

Ritho,

I took a peek at the readme.txt but I am afraid it is all gobbledygook to me!

It mentions Ubuntu and Fedora but no sign of Mint and also it gives so many different ways of installing the drivers. Further to my confusion, it seems to indicate that I may need to uninstall some other drivers first.

This is what frustrates me about Linux based distros, when you need something to er...work it fails to deliver. I don't know how one of the reviews that was linked to from this site gave Mint 10/10.

Also, I am only running Mint from a CD so does that mean I have to do a install first before attempting any driver install.? I assume uninstalling (if that was necessary) any other drivers will not screw up my XP system as the wi-fi works fine on this.

The latter point is very important to me as I would be gutted if anything went wrong with my recent fresh install of XP.

Thanks in advance!

[Ritho]

It mentions Ubuntu and Fedora but no sign of Mint

Mint is basically a tweaked and polished version of Ubuntu. Ubuntu itself is built upon Debian. The steps are usually identical for all Debian/Ubuntu/etc based systems. (The manufacturer just expects you to know that I guess) Anyway in the future you can pretend like you are using Ubuntu. Any thing you find on Ubuntu forums will work in Mint as well.

This is what frustrates me about Linux based distros, when you need something to er...work it fails to deliver

Torres, a few years ago I would have agreed with you. But I was looking at Linux through Microsoft colored glasses. I tried linux several times and gave up for one reason or another. But finally I decided to really dig in and after about a month of toil, discovered the wonderful world that Linux has to offer. Now looking at your statement it makes me smile to think I thought that way too. If I bought a piece of hardware for windows and tried to install it in XP only to discover that the drivers were designed for 95/98 I would blame the manufacture, not Microsoft. You are blaming Linux for Broadcom's lousy support of Linux. There are numerous ways to build automatic install packages for the various popular Linux Distros. At the vary least, Broadcom should have a .deb package which will install automatically in Debian based distros including Ubuntu, Mint, and dozen or more other very popular distros. Broadcom like most other manufactures does not want to put in the effort to make installers, so they leave it up to the end user to compile the code for their particular distro. While it is not hard to do, it is technical and quite confusing to new linux users. At least Broadcom did bother with making a linux version of the driver many do not even do that. Again none of this is Mint's fault.

I will point out, that Distros like Ubuntu have come a long ways in supporting all kinds of hardware and peripherals. Thousands of printers will work immediately in Ubuntu within seconds of being plugged in. No need to find the driver disk. I have done computer trouble shooting for people for years, and one of the most common problems is that they can't get the printer installed. So far I have never faced that in Linux.

Also, I am only running Mint from a CD so does that mean I have to do a install first before attempting any driver install.?

I am not absolutely sure about this. It may work as a way to test your wifi device, but you would have to compile the driver and "reinstall" every time you boot off the CD, as there is no way to save the changes you make. When using a Live CD everything is stored only in memory. (The other possibility is to make a Live USB of Mint instead of a Live CD. You can make a Live USB "persistent" which will save to the usb device any changes you make such as installing programs.)

I assume uninstalling (if that was necessary) any other drivers will not screw up my XP system as the wi-fi works fine on this.

It has nothing to do with Windows. Some Linux distros apparently may have some generic or general Broadcom drivers built in that may need to be removed prior to installing a new one.

The latter point is very important to me as I would be gutted if anything went wrong with my recent fresh install of XP.

As long as you are using a Live CD, Nothing is affected that is installed on your system. As I said before, everything runs from RAM alone.

Anyway let's try installing the driver just to see if it will work while running a Live CD. I will make another post below for this, since this one is already getting a little long.

[lonny]

you might have a look here:: http://www.google.com/#hl=en&expIds=...x=1&fp=1&cad=b

*buntu has had a few wireless issues in 10.10 which Mint is cloned from.