fedora network working, ubunto not so much... any suggestions?

Azorius · #1 19th June 2010, 08:10 PM

I am new to linux and have only used ubunto until now where I installed both fedora and ubunto on a old labtop to see them compeat under the same system specififications... with ubunto I always had problems with ndiswrapper to get my internet to work and it seems that this old lappy is no exception... what has me realy confused is that fedora works right out of the box... and they have the same kernal so the should they should be able to run the same drivers... what it is that fedora does right and ubunto does wrong and is there a way to make ubunto work w/o ndiswrapper like fedora?

lspci:
00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:04.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc RS480 PCI Bridge
00:13.0 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.1 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB Host Controller
00:13.2 USB Controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 USB2 Host Controller
00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 SMBus Controller (rev 10)
00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 IDE Controller
00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-ISA Bridge
00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 PCI-PCI Bridge
00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP SB400 AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 01)
00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc SB400 AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 01)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE)
03:00.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
03:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
03:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
03:04.3 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCIxx21 Integrated FlashMedia Controller
03:04.4 SD Host controller: Texas Instruments PCI6411/6421/6611/6621/7411/7421/7611/7621 Secure Digital Controller
03:06.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

I asume that this helps in disagnosting what driver I should install in ubunto to achive the same hardware lvl as fedora can achive out of the box

stoat · #2 19th June 2010, 08:28 PM

Your wireless chipset is the Broadcom BCM4306. It uses the built-in b43 driver, but it requires firmware that we usually have to acquire elsewhere and install. Starting with Fedora 12, the b43 firmware for a few Broadcom chipsets became included as a package named b43-openfwwf. It will be installed when you install Fedora if one of those supported wireless cards is detected. Yours is one of those. Lucky you. I don't know what the corresponding situation is regarding Ubuntu. Maybe it does not have a corresponding .deb package for that firmware yet (or in your version of Ubuntu).

P.S.: I use the BCM4306, too. I haven't had to use ndiswrapper for several years. The now obsolete bcm43xx reverse engineered driver and its current decendant, b43, ended my use of ndiswrapper several years ago. Ubuntu has had those drivers, too. You have been suffering with ndiswrapper unnecessarily.