WIFI Card Installation and some Newbie Questions

havesomefaith

Hello Guys, glad to finally be a part of the Linux Community!

First of all, I want to say while I consider myself a proficient user (in Windows) I am also completely new to Linux and still learning. So please have mercy in case I've not exhausted all the possible solutions yet.

I only recently bought this Wifi card which sadly does not have any Linux drivers provided by the manufacturer. However it seems that people have gotten it to run by running

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install bcmwl-kernel-source
modprobe wl

Sadly this package in not present in the Solus repository so I don't know how to go on from here. Any help would be appreciated.

Newbie questions:

Question 1: When I want to install a package that is in the Ubuntu repository, how do I go about it? Is this what the "packaging" help section is for? Also, is there a way to follow install instructions where you have register an installation source? I recently wanted to install MikTeX and this was necessary in the install instructions.

Question 2: I just now discovered that I have some app entries that seemingly do nothing. For example when opening a .txt file the default app was "notepad" that has the same icon as the "Text Editor" however opening with "notepad" does not do anything. Changing the default app to "Text Editor" opens the file nicely. Also, I noticed that some Winetricks apps inserted itself into some default file applications such as Photos. I have multiple entries of those Wine apps as well as two entries how this "notepad". Is this normal behaviour or did I screw something up? Here is two screenshots to show you what I mean:
https://imgur.com/6oesZNB https://imgur.com/GDnljYx

Thank you in advance for you expertise and have a great day!

[deleted]

Hi and welcome to the linux community 😀

I'm not sure, but as stated, your Wifi card may work with a certain broadcom driver (bcmwl-kernel-source package).

Have a look at broadcom-sta in the software center. Looks like that could be what you need (so just another name in solus)
Be careful: Do you run the lts kernel? then broadcom-sta would be the right package. In case of the 'current' kernel you would need broadcom-sta-current. Check with uname -r in terminal what kernel you use

-Question 1: you can't install a package from the Ubuntu repo. Search for the package in question in Solus' software center (maybe it is called different). Or look for a flatpak/snap/appimage package. Or request for the package (https://getsol.us/articles/packaging/request-a-package/en/). Or install from source (not recommended, especially for an novice). The packaging section in the help center is about how to build a package for solus.

-Question 2: So you installed "wine". Why do you need it? Wine is for running MS Windows apps. Is that what you need? Or was it by accident?

Well, seems like it created kind of a mess by grabbing some file associations. (e.g. .txt). You need to "open with" the files and select the proper app (like you did with Text Editor). It should remember that choice for next time then.

havesomefaith

I have already tried the broadcom-sta package using DoFlicky. Sadly the WiFi panel still says that no Wifi adapter is connected.

I didn't install Wine / Winetricks by accident, I installed it through Lutris because I wanted to test the performance of Overwatch in Linux. After googling a little bit it seems that Wine hijacks some file associations by default. I followed a guide to delete the file associations and prevent them from updating them

https://askubuntu.com/questions/323437/how-to-prevent-wine-from-adding-file-associations

It seems there is also an option in winecfg where you can disable file association:

https://wiki.winehq.org/FAQ#Installing_and_Running_Windows_Applications

However I don't know if it removes already existing file associations (I followed the guide in the first link).

Thanks again for answers!

downhill

Take a look at my original post in this thread

fishyman65712

downhill / you beat me .... i was going in for the assist.

downhill

fishyman65712 ;-)

havesomefaith

After installing Solus again (tried out Manjaro for a little while) the WiFi card worked after installing the suggested driver from DoFlicky. I'm not sure if it also worked the first time around and I simply didn't see the WiFi switch up top. Anyway, it is working now. Thanks again for the replies!

Cheers!

Nibb31

I know that suggesting different hardware is considered unhelpful, but whenever I have installed Linux on a PC that had Broadcom wifi, I always replaced it with an dual-band Intel adapter for 15€ and had zero trouble.