Broadcom wifi doesn't work. Dell Latitude E6500. Help

Hi, I have run Rocky 8.x on a number of Dell E6510’s and so I can relate :slight_smile:

I am going to assume your question is not about kernel module how to (as per your title) but you want to get your wifi card running.

My suggestions:

  • Run Rocky 8.x not 9.x (You did not specify what you are running)

  • There are many different wifi cards from different manufacturers.

  • The kernel nor Rocky will have all drivers for all makes and models of cards.

  • Many Intel wifi cards are supported by kernel and hence Rocky.

  • The E6500 is at least 10 years old and over time, hardware including wifi cards, often gets replaced in older laptops, so you may have any make and model wifi card, not the original (likely intel) one.

It is important to know which card you have. You can do that by:

  • Opening up the laptop and seeing what the wifi card says - it is very easy to do - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qHq5kdJDASg
  • Run lspci in Terminal. Look for “02:00.0 Network controller” - Eg I have an Intel wifi card and the result is: “02:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation Centrino Advanced-N 6200 (rev 35)”

If you have a Broadcom wifi card, then you can try the following:

Install RPM Fusion non-free (I dont think you need the free) - you can do this by going to the site and following the links.
https://rpmfusion.org/

run
sudo dnf install akmod-wl

Reboot

If that does not work, I suggest you purchase an Intel wifi card (they dont cost much used) and try that.

I realize this may not be easy to do with only having dog paws :wink:

Hope that helps.

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