My PC is currently running Windows 8.1 Pro and I am looking into switching over to Fedora 38 KDE since that desktop environment is closer to what I’m already used to. My GPU is a GeForce GTX 1060 6GB and my WiFi card is a Broadcom BCM4360.
I tried a live boot through a flashed USB and saw that I had no available connections, which I learned was due to my WiFi card’s driver not being installed. I know since my GPU is an Nvidia that I’ll have to download and install those drivers as well after the rpmfusion repos.
I can’t connect my computer to the internet with an ethernet cable, so I guess my main question is can I download the needed files while booted into Windows 8.1 since it can access WiFi, then install it while booted in Fedora afterwards? If that’s a possibility, how what steps would I take to do that exactly?
You should be able to download the broadcom-wl package from rpmfusion onto a flash drive then once the initial install is done use that flash drive to install the driver onto the system. Then a reboot would enable the wifi driver. Yes, the needed packages can be downloaded using windows and placed onto the flash drive.
I don’t know all the packages that would be needed as dependencies for that package, but surely someone can assist in identifying what may be needed. Once all the necessary packages are available it can be installed easily from the flash drive.
A quick look at the packages on that site give at first glance 3 different broadcom packages, all from the nonfree repo. You would definitely need broadcom-wl & akmod-wl from rpmfusion, akmods, kernel-devel, and all the dependencies of those from fedora.
One step at a time.
The wifi seems first then the remaining needs will be easy to install once you are online.
I had asked in the Fedora Discord what I would need to do, and a moderator helped me out by directing me a bit in that I would need to install the Nvidia akmod as that was called on by broadcom-wl, but to install the Nvidia akmod I would need to install the rpmfusions free and non-free repos.
I plan on running Fedora 38 KDE on a live USB flashed with Rufus, though if I need to I can flash it with Balena Etcher, or Ventoy. Should I make a separate partition for the drivers and files to build or should I wait to move those things onto the flash drive after running the “install to hard drive” program in the live environment to an SSD and formatting the flashdrive?
Thank you for letting me know that I can in fact download what I need and install it from there instead of over the internet. Would you happen to know the inputs for the Konsole I should use to install from a specified location rather than from the internet?
How do I navigate this website to download anything off of it, I looked up broadcom-wl and I see the package it redirected me to and I click on “build status”, then on " [broadcom-wl-6.30.223.271-21.fc38]". I see two download options for RPMs, src and noarch. Which of these do I want to download or do I want the .git?
Some cheap USB wifi adapters work with linux using drivers available in the installer. I have installed Fedora on an old 32-bit iMac using a 2.4 GHz adapter from Plugable, but their current models say “NOT INTENDED FOR macOS OR LINUX”:
The drivers for the adapter are usually integrated into the Linux kernel, however the driver implementation on Linux is not good. There are some open-source drivers for the RTL8188EUS chipset in the adapter that you could try (search GitHub), but they aren’t something we support, nor can we speak to their functionality.
You can check for linux support using Linux Hardware.
[D-Link USB WiFi Adapter Dual Band AC1300 Wireless DWA-181-US ](site:https://linux-hardware.org D-Link USB WiFi Adapter Dual Band AC1300 Wireless DWA-181-US ) uses
RTL8192EU (no “S”) claims to work with linux and has many “working” reports. There is
a kernel driver.
TP-Link Archer T9UHsite:https://linux-hardware.org TP-Link Archer T9UH: many users got it working (unclear what definition of “working”).
D-Link DWA-X1850 Wi-Fi 6 USB Adapter site:https://linux-hardware.org d-link dwa-x1850 wi-fi 6 usb adapter uses rtl8188eu: many users got it to work.
Note that some vendors use multiple chipsets under the same model name, so best to look for a vendor that advertises Linux support and then apply due diligence (Linux Hardware site, Amazon reviews).
I…had not thought of this. I’ll give it a try when I can and I’ll see if that works out for my situation. If not, then I’ll look into either getting my setup closer to an ethernet connection or look into a budget wifi card that would be compatable with Fedora 38 KDE. I’ll log back in at a later date and mark which turned out to be the solution that worked for me.