Is there a way to get Broadcom 802.11ac WiFi (43b1) working on Ubuntu 12.10?

Question

I have a dual boot of Windows 8 / Ubuntu 12.10 on an ASUS G75VX with Broadcom 802.11ac Network adapter device 43b1. It seems that there exists no drivers for this adapter. I have done all of the instructions in the following post:

No Wireless connectivity after installing Ubuntu 12.10 on Windows 8

Some info:

sudo iwconfig
eth0      no wireless extensions.

lo        no wireless extensions.

lspci -nn | grep 0280
03:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation Device [14e4:43b1] (rev 03)

After doing the instructions of the link above, I realized I didn't have the option to install bcmwl-sta-source from synaptic. Furthermore, from the list of devices that the bcmwl-kernel-source supports, it doesn't include this specific model. Is it not supported yet?

Please let me know if anyone has gotten around to this issue. It will bug me alot if I just bought a new laptop and can't use the super fast wireless connection it provides :(

P.S in Windows 8 it works fine.

Solution 1

According to Linux wireless LAN support there is no support yet.

Solution 2

Yes, ndiswrapper can actually get this device to work. Download the Windows XP driver for the ASUS PCE-AC66 from here: http://www.asus.com/Networking/PCEAC66/#support_Download_17 and install it with ndiswrapper.

Disclaimer: I have only used it with Ubuntu 13.04 and ndiswrapper 1.58 and only for a few hours... Disclaimer2: It seems I can only get it to work with unsecured networks, but this might be a problem with wpa_supplicant...

Comments

[gertvdijk]

Good question. But unfortunately, a Google search on these device IDs give me nothing except this question. As if you're the only one with this device! I think this should be filed as a bug report. Hardware in Ubuntu should just work. And if it doesn't - support for it should be added by developers. How do I report a bug?

[chili555]

You might try ndiswrapper. Over on the Windows partition, are there .inf files for the device? Any for Windows XP? Do you have a driver disk from which we can extract the XP inf and sys files? Of course, you could buy a cheap USB wireless device and wait.

[OmarAsifShaikh]

any leads? im having the same problem aswell.