Installing broadcom wifi drivers

Ask Fedora
1

@sabrina and others… I checked an iMac 21.5" (iMac16,2 non 4K) from 2015, with Fedora Linux 37 installed, using inxi -n and get the message that there is no driver for the built in Broadcom BCM43602 installed.

Network: Device-1: Broadcom BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC driver: N/A

I reboot the same iMac from the official Fedora Linux 37 Live iso, “burned” to an USB Stick, have to sudo dnf install -y inxi to install the inxi utility and run the command again, getting the following result:

Network: Device: Broadcom BCM43602 802.11ac Wireless LAN SoC driver: brcmfmac IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00

Conclusion: on the Fedora Linux 37 Live iso the Wi-Fi driver for this iMac is present, however it does not get installed onto its SSD when installing Fedora itself. Booted from the Fedora Linux 37 Live iso Wi-Fi can be configured and used to traverse the internet, however when booting from the installed iMac no Wi-Fi adapter is found and with that, no Wi-Fi network can be selected and used.

So the drivers are available on the Live iso, now how to get them into that installed Mac, or your machine as well…?

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1.) Enable rpmfusion free and non-free repositories, see Configuration - RPM Fusion
sudo dnf install https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm https://mirrors.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-$(rpm -E %fedora).noarch.rpm

2.) sudo dnf install broadcom-wl, see broadcom-wl | Package Info | koji

3.) reboot

Further information: Broadcom wireless - ArchWiki

edit: @memento : I moved your post into a new topic, since your question is unrelated to the problem the OP was facing with a newer generation wifi chipset.

And, by the way, there is a bunch of similar or same topics on the forum: Search results for 'broadcom' - Fedora Discussion

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Would it harm to preinstall this driver package for all users, if they dont have a broadcom card?

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This driver is based on akmods that rebuilds the module on each kernel update, and it takes extra time and CPU load.

Also Fedora doesn’t preinstall non-free packages or ship them in the main repos.

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Okay thanks! So this would require a special kernel with the akmods kernel modifyer.

Do you know if akmods works on OSTree? Because changing CPU settings with ryzenadj doesnt work for example.

I know, it would be for a custom image for people with broadcomm cards.

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No, Akmods is a package readily available from fedora. Not a special kernel at all.
Merely a tool to automatically build the needed modules when a kernel is updated.

The comment about non-free packages is the key as to why it is not provided by default. The user must choose to install that broadcom software, which is provided by a 3rd party repo.

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