I have a really old laptop and no Linux so far had drivers built-in for it. I also don't have access to the router, so I can only use wifi, and I do want to be able to use wifi. So how do I get it working? I tried finding the package, but they just fail installation/don't work/require a few dozens of other packages. I only got a couple of Linux (out of over 10) booting up on it in the first place, and I did manage to get wifi working on Lubuntu awhile back when I had access to ethernet cable - took maybe 10 minutes to install all the packages (well, wait for them to be installed), but it worked after that.
The Wifi adapter is Broadcom Limited BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01).
lspci
andlsusb
can help determine what pieces may be required: some WiFi chipsets need binary firmware in order to function, in addition to kernel modules. With the information that you provided, the answers that you will receive will be extremely general in nature as there have no specifics to base an answer on.lspci -vv
output relevant for "WiFi".lsusb -vv
: The same. My example (ZyXEL) :$ lsusb -vv | grep -i zyx
→Bus 002 Device 005 : ID 0586:3412 ZyXEL Communications Corp. 802.11bg ... idVendor : 0x0586 ZyXEL Communications Corp.
b43
module :sudo modprobe -v b43