To know what driver(s) are operable on the computer's Broadcom wireless network device, the device ID and chipset name will need to be detected. Kernel driver mainline version (recommended) The brcm80211 driver was introduced in the 2.6.37 kernel and in the 2.6.39 kernel it was sub-divided into the brcmsmac and brcmfmac drivers. In September 2010, Broadcom released a fully open source driver. This is a restrictively licensed driver and it does not work with hidden ESSIDs, but Broadcom promised to work towards a more open approach in the future. In August 2008, Broadcom released the 802.11 Linux STA driver officially supporting Broadcom wireless devices on GNU/Linux. The reverse-engineered b43 driver was introduced in the 2.6.24 kernel. The limited set of wireless devices that were supported were done so by a reverse-engineered driver. For a good portion of its initial history, Broadcom devices were either entirely unsupported or required the user to tinker with the firmware. 5.10 No 5GHz for BCM4360 (14e4:43a0) / BCM43602 (14e4:43ba) devicesīroadcom has a noted history with its support for Wi-Fi devices regarding GNU/Linux.5.9 Connection is unstable with some routers.5.5 Interface is showing but not allowing connections.5.4 Interfaces swapped with broadcom-wl.
