No Linux distro detects Dell Inspiron 11 3148's wireless adapter

I am trying to install a Linux distro on this old laptop, which sports a 1.70GHz processor but also has a touchscreen.

So far, no distro has been able to connect with the wireless adapter (the device doesn’t appear when I try ip addr or similar).

Where can I find Linux compatible wireless adapter firmware for this model? The Dell site only reports a host of options for Windows executables.

What’s the output of lspci | egrep -i '(network|wireless)'?

Please wait, I’ll run that command asap.

Meanwhile, it seems that this is a fairly rampant issue with this laptop model on any distro:

  • https
    ://forums.kali.org/showthread.php?48525-Can-t-install-kali-linux-on-a-Dell-Inspiron-11-3148-wifi-card-not-detected
  • https ://www.dell.com/community/Networking-Internet-Bluetooth/Wifi-problem-in-Dell-inspiron-3148/td-p/4708395
  • https ://www.dell.com/community/Laptops-General-Read-Only/Wifi-not-working-on-for-Ubuntu-or-any-linux-flavor-on-Dell/td-p/4571053
  • https
    ://askubuntu.com/questions/626642/how-to-install-broadcom-wireless-drivers-offline (also provides a solution for Ubuntu)
  • https
    ://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=210264

It’s also plagued generally by issues with its driver.

Some sites tell that I have to find the “broadcom” driver under Additional Drivers.

Let’s try all of the above. Obviously the terminal command is the first step.

I got Broadcom BCM43142 802.11b/g/n (rev 01).

There is a thread on Arch forum labeled solved - it is quite old but so is your system :grin:

Edit: Everything finally works now!! I installed ://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl-dkms/ and carefully followed the instructions over at ://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AUR#Installing_packages)
What I learned from this: rtfm for sure. Thank you all, for trying your best to help me out. Especially to twelveeighty for making this!
– ://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?pid=1308505#p1308505

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/broadcom-wl-dkms/

This link doesn’t work.

what about this driver?

Broadcom bluetooth firmware for BCM43142A0 based devices.

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/bcm43142a0-firmware/

or

Firmware for Broadcom B43 wireless networking chips - latest release

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b43-firmware/

Firmware for Broadcom B43 wireless networking chips - trusted release

https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/b43-firmware-classic/

I had come across these links.

Unfortunately, this wiki seems to be discouraging about driver support for B43142: https://wireless.wiki.kernel.org/en/users/drivers/b43

I also didn’t find bcm43142 on AUR through Octopi (I’m currently testing out KaOS).

I did install broadcom-wl from Octopi - didn’t find its *-dkms version if these aren’t the same thing.

broadcom-wl got installed automatically once the Manjaro Hello setup was done.

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