Linux distros that work with Dell Laptops' 1397 mini-wifi card & Broadcom router

[kyrathaba]

For anyone who owns a Dell laptop and wants to run a Linux distro:

Many Dell laptops come equipped with the Dell WLAN 1397 mini-wifi card.  I've had a Dell Inspiron 1545 for several years, and have tried several Linux distros.  The only two I have found that detected my Broadcom router's wireless easily, without any hassle on my part, are xPUD and LucidPuppy.  LucidPuppy was a breeze, and looks very nice.  Very attractive icons and overall theme.

If anyone is interested, I recommended installing LucidPuppy to USB, along with a variety of recovery, antivirus, and other ISOs, via SARDU.

The only thing you may need to do to enable wireless router connection on your Dell laptop is copy any subfolders in C:\Drivers to the root of the /puppy/ folder on your USB pen-drive.

Great stuff!! 

[zridling]

Wow, thanks for the tip, kyrathaba!

[kyrathaba]

Note: at first, I was having to re-enter my wireless WEP passphrase each time I logged in, but after downloading updates, and copying my drivers to the USB, it picks it up automatically everytime I run LucidPuppy.  Firefox and Chrome seem faster too: not only more responsive, but they seem to download some large test-files a bit faster (2-5 seconds faster on 500 Mb test files).

[kyrathaba]

Here's a screenshot of my LucidPuppy desktop on my laptop, thus far:

Linux distros that work with Dell Laptops' 1397 mini-wifi card & Broadcom router

[Mrfwishy]

I've gone thru several distros that supposedly recognise my dell 1397 wireless card, and am now trying lucid puppy with no success. Where have I one wrong? Any advice on setting it up? I have tried the Broadcom packages that come with puppy and none of them work. Please help before I give up and go back to windows

[kyrathaba]

I've never had good luck getting any linux distro to connect to my wifi. LucidPuppy would intermittently connect, at best. Other distros, of which I tried Fedora, Mint, and at least four others, I couldn't do squat with -- but then I'm ignorant about Linux.

[kyrathaba]

What's funny is that Android, the OS underlying many tablets, is a version of Linux. It connects just fine. It's all in the engineering and how much effort gets put into making something seamlessly easy for the end-user.

[40hz]

I'm running Linux Mint Cinnamon on a Dell Inspiron 1525 with no hassles.

Because the required Broadcom driver for the 1397 wifi card is proprietary, it isn't included by default although Mint does detect it's absence and offers to install it for you if needed.



The only catch is you need to be connected to the Internet to download - so you'll need to have a wired connection in order for Mint to automatically install it for you. (The alternative is to download it yourself, copy it to media, and then install it manually from that.)

Once wifi is running a few moments later you won't need a wired connection again.

[kyrathaba]

Sounds like Mint Cinnamon is your best bet, Mrfwishy.

[rgdot]

Just to add my recent experience .... Mint and Realtek is a hassle though