I haven’t installed Manjaro yet. I only booted it up via a bootable USB. Everything seems to be working fine but not my wifi… I found out that my wifi card is Broadcom BCM43xx 1.0 (7.77.111.1 AirPortDriverBrcmNIC-1710.3)
I’m not sure what to do from here. I don’t wanna install it until I can get the wifi to work in bootable mode.
Apple, thus MacBooks, are notoriously difficult to set up properly. Almost everything is proprietary, IIRC, See
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Laptop/Apple
And/or:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Mac#MacBook_Air
Nevertheless there are many BCM43* drivers in the AUR:
$ pamac search BCM43
[...]
bcm4356a2-firmware 1201710-8 AUR
Broadcom bluetooth firmware for BCM4356A2 based devices.
bcm4350-firmware 0.3-1 AUR
Bluetooth firmware for the Broadcom BCM4350 card
bcm4350c5-firmware 1201710-8 AUR
Broadcom bluetooth firmware for BCM4350C5 based devices.
bcm4335c0-firmware 1201710-8 AUR
Broadcom bluetooth firmware for BCM4335C0 based devices.
bcm43142-firmware 1-1 AUR
Firmware for BCM43142 bluetooth chip (0a5c:21d7)
bcm43142a0-firmware 1201710-8 AUR
Broadcom bluetooth firmware for BCM43142A0 based devices.
So I suggest you boot into a live environment, and install and test each one. To install it, open a terminal and run:
pamac build <driverName>
Where <driverName> is the name of the driver to install.
Hope this helps!
Hello! Thanks!!! Also if one of those work should I keep trying after testing wifi speeds? Or is there only 1 which will work
I have no idea if there are more than one, so you could check and then use the best one, or the only one that works.
Hello,
do you still have that wifi-problem? I installed Manjaro on a MacBook Air 2.1 in December 2023, and it took until this week to get Wifi working.
System:
Kernel: 6.6.10-1-MANJARO arch: x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 13.2.1
clocksource: hpet avail: acpi_pm
parameters: BOOT_IMAGE=/boot/vmlinuz-6.6-x86_64
root=UUID=314bc07d-b8fe-41e1-9d06-409cebe96139 rw quiet splash apparmor=1
security=apparmor udev.log_priority=3
Desktop: Xfce v: 4.18.1 tk: Gtk v: 3.24.36 wm: xfwm4 v: 4.18.0
with: xfce4-panel tools: xfce4-screensaver vt: 7 dm: LightDM v: 1.32.0
Distro: Manjaro Linux base: Arch Linux
Machine:
Type: Laptop System: Apple product: MacBookAir2,1 v: 1.0
serial: <superuser required> Chassis: type: 10 v: Mac-F42D88C8
serial: <superuser required>
Mobo: Apple model: Mac-F42D88C8 serial: <superuser required>
uuid: <superuser required> UEFI: Apple v: MBA21.88Z.0075.B03.0811141325
date: 11/14/08
...
Network:
Device-1: Broadcom BCM4321 802.11a/b/g/n vendor: Apple AirPort Extreme
driver: wl v: kernel pcie: gen: 1 speed: 2.5 GT/s lanes: 1 bus-ID: 03:00.0
chip-ID: 14e4:4328 class-ID: 0280
IF: wlp3s0 state: up mac: <filter>
The needed driver was also installed, but it didn’t work either. Somewhere in the arch-pages I found a hint:
sudo rmmod ssb
sudo rmmod b43
modprobe wl
I couldn’t unload ssb. so I changed it to
sudo rmmod ssb-hcd
sudo rmmod ssb
sudo rmmod b43
modprobe wl
One second later a note popped up that wireless networks were detected.
I couldn’t blacklist the ssb-hcd module. It also was loaded again after a boot, blocking wifi.
I renamed the ssb and ssh-hcd with something after the “.ko.zst” so they couldn’t be found anymore. Wifi goes up automatically after a boot now.