On 02/11/2017 11:02 PM, Billy O wrote:
hello my name is William O'Brien
I have been using and researching debian for alittle while now and
have been trying to access wifi I have tried several different ways
and researched many tutorials and help sections with very little
success and was wondering if you might be able to assist me with my
problem.
so currently the computer I am trying to gain access with is a dell 1521
with Broadcom 4311
the debian os works fine. however the few ways I have tried don't seem
to give me any closer to accessing wifi and may end up re installing
the os
but am wondering if theres any expert advice you might be able to give
on this subject.
--
William O'Brien
The Broadcom wifi boards are notorious! Windows has drivers for them,
and in my experience Mint 7 KDE 64-bit LTE also does. (Both work "out of
the box.") PCLinuxOS does not, and it is a
bitch to get it to work under PCLOS, altho possible. It may be more
difficult now, because I believe that Broadcom has been bought out by
another outfit. There is a large batch of comments
on the PCLINUXOS FORUMS, dating back to 2014, and some from 2015 and
2016, many involving me. (dougmack)
Seeing that you are using Deb, you might find it easier to switch to
Mint, which also uses the deb install system, and is filewise compatible
with Ubuntu, which as you probably know, was
a spinoff from Debian.
To some extent at least, Google is your friend. Put in Linux and
Broadcom 4311 and you may find some help there. I'm sure you can access
the PCLOS Forum without registering or signing
in, altho you can't post unless you do register. It is a pretty friendly
user interface, with a search feature, so you should be able to find
most of the Broadcom correspondence there.
Good luck! You're going to need it!
--doug
PS: If you can find a wifi board that's directly supported by Debian, it
may be worth your while to buy one and plug it in. I think they're all
pretty interchangeable. That would save you
hours of grief. I almost did that, but finally got it to work before I
went to that extreme.
--
Blessed are the peacemakers...for they shall be shot at from both
sides.--A.M.Greeley