Missing WiFi adapter for MacBook Pro 81 #9
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I have an old MacBook Pro (81) 2nd gen Core i5. OSX isn't supported anymore, but it's a good Linux laptop for simple things. I successfully put Butterbian-XFCE on it using the Wifi.
However, I just tried installing ButterKnife so I could try some other WM/DE and it could not see my WiFi. So the Macbook wifi driver is missing. I have a USB wifi adapter so I can get around it like I did on Debain 12, but since Butterbian-XFCE has it as well as Debian 13 net install, I'm guessing it wouldn't be too hard to add those drivers.
The specific hardware is:
03:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 02)
I spoke too soon about using my USB wifi as a workaround. It's no included either:
Linksys/ Cisco AE1000
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 13b1:002f Linksys AE1000 v1 802.11n [Ralink RT3572]
I added the driver on butterknife yesterday (0.2.11) that should get your usb wifi working, but I need to add two more packages to get the internal wifi working. 0.2.12 will have it shortly.
--Fixed in 0.2.12.
2.11 did not work for the linksys usb adapter. However, once I pulled my head out of my butt, I remembered it has a RJ45 port. I'll test whatever you come up with.
2.12 sort of works. I could not just connect to wifi, I had to run the full nmtui. The connect to wifi fails with a traceback in the python3 script. Value error invalid literal for int() with base 10: 'F8\ '
This was using the internal broadcom 4331
Update: I installed the vanilla XFCE4 using 2.12 using nmtui to setup the WIFI, but the download speed was crippled. After I got it installed and rebooted the wifi speed was terrible. To fixed this I had to install the broadcom-sta-dkms and linux-headers. and then unload some things.
sudo modprobe -r b43 b43legacy ssb bcma wlThis was not a problem installing butterbian-xfce4 3.2
This isn't a big problem for me, as I can use Ethernet, then install the broadcom-sta-dkms package.
I wanted to correct something I said. Debian 13.5 net install ISO does not see my internal WiFi chip, but it does see the Linksys AE1000 USB, which is how I now remember installing Debian 13. As soon as I reboot after install I just did:
sudo apt install linux-headers-amd64 broadcom-sta-dkms