I’m a new linux user. I’m also a new fedora user. I’ve just installed fedora 38 on my MacBook Air (2017) and decided to give it a try for at least a month. I absolutely love the experience as I have been contemplating about switching from macOS to Linux (fedora) for a very long time.
However, I’ve encountered my first issue. After installation, I could not find any option for bluetooth on the tab on the upper right corner that has several different options. Then I opened settings and searched for the bluetooth and this (screenshot) is what I found.
I have absolutely no idea on how to fix this problem. I searched on the internet (got flustered a bit!) but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for. I also do not have a tremendous understanding of the command line except for common unix commands.
It seems the Mac uses a broadcom chipset for wifi and bluetooth. With that proprietary chipset and drivers an install of fedora cannot include those drivers by default.
Most times that can be fixed by enabling the rpmfusion repo with the instructions here https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration
then installing the drivers with dnf install broadcom-wl
After waiting about 5 minutes for everything to be configured a reboot should load the drivers and hopefully everything will then work.
First, I enabled access to both the free and the nonfree RPM fusion repositories from https://rpmfusion.org/Configuration and did dnf install broadcom-wl.
Then, I rebooted the laptop and then nothing happened, i.e., there was an error on the screen (white text on a completely black screen) that would not allow me to move beyond that area. I thought that I had (for the lack of a better term) bricked my laptop.
Sorry, I should also have mentioned that the upgrade should be done as well.
One may run lspci -nnk to show the details about the installed wifi device. From that we can get the exact chipset used and then search for problems and/or fixes with fedora.
In some cases only the wifi side works, and in others both wifi & bluetooth work. It depends upon the exact chipset used. The command above gives us a chance to find out the situation with your system.
I have aided about as far as I can since I have no apple devices. Maybe someone with a similar device can add to what I have done.
I do know that there have been threads here with bluetooth failing on a mac even when wifi is functional, but I did not peruse them as it was not related to my hardware.