The kernel module in use appears to be the same, and with the same 5GHz wireless network, Linux Mint gives me >200mbps where Fedora gives me sub-50kbps with over 80% packet loss. This is on the wireless adapter built in to a 2012 Macbook Air, model MacBookAir5,2, with a fresh install of Fedora.
Your Fedora system strangely shows the device as an ethernet interface, while Mint correctly identifies it as WiFi. Surprising that Fedora connects to anything. You could try a more recent Fedora installer spin with a 7.1 kernel from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins/.
Note that the driver version is different in those listings.
Also note that it appears the fedora version may be the f44 initial release (April 2026) since it has kernel 6.19.10.
Potentially an update to fedora may solve this. Also if this is a new install there is a respin of the fedora OS that is available with all updates as of 20260731 located as indicated by George just above.
I updated to 7.1.5-201.fc44.x86_64 with an Ethernet adapter, with no change in behavior.
Is there a way to downgrade the kernel to 6.14.0 as was installed on linux mint? I’m wondering if this is some kind of regression between 6.14 and 6.19.
re: new drivers, I think (? not 100% sure how to tell) that both fedora and linux mint are using brcmsmac. So this would imply that it’s not a driver problem?
Fedora provides brcmsmac but there is also available broadcom-wl from rpmfusion that works as well for many broadcom chipsets.
Your post above with the info about both fedora and mint shows fedora was (at that time) using brcmsmac version 6.19.10-300 while mint was using version 6.14.0-37-generic. It would appear that the fedora brcmsmac gets the kernel version it is tied to while the mint version may not.
Your particular adapter may need the driver from rpmfusion instead of the free one that is provided by fedora.
With Apple Intel systems each OS update installs new firmware. Linux drivers are generally written for the latest firmware. It could help if you can install inxi and run inxi -ezxx, which will provide an overall summary (sanitized to be suitable for posting) including the firmware version.
My iMac 14,2 has a month newer firmware. The LHDB shows it is widely used with linux: https://linux-hardware.org/?id=bios:apple-433-140-2-0-0-04-18-2022. It can be difficult to connect to the LHDB (too many data scrapers?) but very useful to see which module works with Linux for others with your model.
Ethernet interfaces can be damaged by electrical surges. I had one name-brand card in a desktop that appeared to work using ssh, but NFS mounts were failing. The card passed the vendor’s diagnostics, but had visibly burned components on the board. A replacement ethernet card restored full functionality. I suspect someone connected a network cable to a telephone line. At work it was not unusual for laptops used for travel to conferences to have failed ethernet.
I’m not sure I understand, why would fedora require a different module than linux mint in order for the card to work? And this is a wireless card with no hardware damage, it works fine in linux mint.
Newer kernels and associated modules are usually built with newer compilers and libraries. An effort is made to ensure that software built on systems with older kernels and libraries still work, but there can be exceptions for security fixes, but software built for a newer kernel may not work on earlier kernels. With the recent flood of vulnerabilities found by AI, some modules may need updates to work properly on systems where security bugs have been addressed with updates.
Is there a way to install kernel versions between 6.14.x and 6.19 on Fedora? I can test to see if the old version works, and if so, do a bisect (effectively) to identify which version introduced the issue.
Yes, older kernels may be installed.
You must enable the updates-archive repo to select any kernel other than
The latest kernel for the installed fedora version
The initial released kernel for the installed fedora version.
You then can select
Any kernel that has been in the pipeline for the installed fedora version
Any released kernel for any fedora version if you are using dnf and use the --releasever=XX option to select the fedora version for which the desired kernel was released.
It is not, however, recommended to use older kernels since there have been many many updates and security fixes between the 6.14 kernel and the current 7.1 kernel; as well as many library updates.
Using the bcm43xx-fwcutter tool to install Broadcom firmware in Fedora.
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To use the bcm43xx driver which is part of the Fedora kernel, you need
to extract the firmware which is part of the official MacOS, Windows,
or Linux drivers.
If your Fedora installation is dual-booting with MacOS or Windows, then
you probably already have a suitable driver available. Otherwise, the
README file contains a number of links from which you can download
drivers. It shouldn't matter which one you use -- the kernel's bcm43xx
driver ought to work with all of them.
Having obtained the file from which you wish to extract the firmware,
run this command as root. Replace '<DRIVERFILE>' with the actual name
of the file, of course:
bcm43xx-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware <DRIVERFILE>
This will save the various firmware files into the /lib/firmware
directory, from where the kernel can load them when necessary.