Yeah, one of those threads again, and I've spent some time doing research not only here at MacRumors but multiple Linux distro sites like Linux Mint, Ubuntu, Fedora, etc and for all the research I'm still basically nowhere so...
Having said that, I've got a late 2008 MBA at the moment, basically given to me because of a dead and near-exploded battery (since removed) and a dead SSD (wish it did work but when attached to the MBA it won't even boot to anything at all, sadly), and I intend to get El Capitan on it but I'd like to dual boot it with some Linux distro and I haven't chosen one just yet.
I have, however, done some testing using an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS LiveDVD as well as Linux Mint 17.2 Live DVD (based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS), and even a Fedora 22 LiveDVD and of course, everything works nicely during that LiveDVD session except the wireless.
I've probably read 2,000 posts in a hundred plus threads in the past few days and done multiple attempts to add or remove drivers, compile things, and other aspects and not once have I ever been able to get the OS to make actual use of the Broadcom bcm4321 wireless in the MBA I have. I've checked the blacklists, done everything I can possibly think of to get it to work and I'm still dead in the water so, I figured as a last resort I'd just make a thread and ask if anyone else has ever had success getting the Broadcom bcm4321 on a late 2008 model MBA to work as it should. I don't care about the Bluetooth aspects since it's a dual purpose device, I'd just like to get the Wi-Fi functionality actually... well, working.
Additional info: using Linux Mint 17.2 and then trying lspci does show the card identified correctly. Then attempting to load the included driver in that distro (the Broadcom STA one) shows a message of "This device is using an alternative driver..." and I have no idea which one that might be. I made sure the b43 driver was not installed, made sure the bcm43xx kernel source was (that's the STA driver iirc) and still zippo, nada, nothing, zilch, between null and void. It's pretty irritating sometimes how Broadcom products and Linux just can't seem to get along but I keep trying anyway.
If anyone has any tips or suggestions I'd love to hear them. I know it's an old MBA and Apple basically considers it obsolete at this point but whatever, it still works given that I need to get a battery and internal storage for it (currently running El Capitan from an external USB hard drive and it does work but obviously it's slow going) and I'd like to make the best of it while it does actually work.
Thanks for anything provided...
Having said that, I've got a late 2008 MBA at the moment, basically given to me because of a dead and near-exploded battery (since removed) and a dead SSD (wish it did work but when attached to the MBA it won't even boot to anything at all, sadly), and I intend to get El Capitan on it but I'd like to dual boot it with some Linux distro and I haven't chosen one just yet.
I have, however, done some testing using an Ubuntu 14.04 LTS LiveDVD as well as Linux Mint 17.2 Live DVD (based on Ubuntu 14.04 LTS), and even a Fedora 22 LiveDVD and of course, everything works nicely during that LiveDVD session except the wireless.
I've probably read 2,000 posts in a hundred plus threads in the past few days and done multiple attempts to add or remove drivers, compile things, and other aspects and not once have I ever been able to get the OS to make actual use of the Broadcom bcm4321 wireless in the MBA I have. I've checked the blacklists, done everything I can possibly think of to get it to work and I'm still dead in the water so, I figured as a last resort I'd just make a thread and ask if anyone else has ever had success getting the Broadcom bcm4321 on a late 2008 model MBA to work as it should. I don't care about the Bluetooth aspects since it's a dual purpose device, I'd just like to get the Wi-Fi functionality actually... well, working.
Additional info: using Linux Mint 17.2 and then trying lspci does show the card identified correctly. Then attempting to load the included driver in that distro (the Broadcom STA one) shows a message of "This device is using an alternative driver..." and I have no idea which one that might be. I made sure the b43 driver was not installed, made sure the bcm43xx kernel source was (that's the STA driver iirc) and still zippo, nada, nothing, zilch, between null and void. It's pretty irritating sometimes how Broadcom products and Linux just can't seem to get along but I keep trying anyway.
If anyone has any tips or suggestions I'd love to hear them. I know it's an old MBA and Apple basically considers it obsolete at this point but whatever, it still works given that I need to get a battery and internal storage for it (currently running El Capitan from an external USB hard drive and it does work but obviously it's slow going) and I'd like to make the best of it while it does actually work.
Thanks for anything provided...