Wifi not working and system freezes after 2023.12.10 Stable Update

The broadcom chips in the Macbooks can usually be made to work with a number of drivers. Your BMC4331 chip-ID 14e4:4331 is compatible with b43 en:users:drivers:b43 [Linux Wireless] .

A good fallback kernel is 5.10LTS, expected EOL end of 2026, which works fine in my mbp 5,4 with BCM4322 (using the b43 driver). Since the current issue seems to be kernel-related just switching to 5.10 might already fix your problem. If it doesn’t you can switch drivers:

  • remove broadcom-wl-dkms
  • install b43-firmware from the AUR
  • create /etc/modprobe.d/b43.conf and put in:
    options b43 allhwsupport=1
  • run modprobe -r wl
  • run modprobe b43

and wifi should come on. If not check that b43 isn’t blacklisted in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist. If it is working you have to make the solution permanent by making sure the driver gets loaded at boot:

  • create etc/modules-load.d/modules.conf and put in:
# List of modules to load at boot
b43
  • reboot

Check also the ‘switching drivers’ section here: en/users/Drivers/b43 - Linux Wireless or read: How to enable Broadcom Wireless on Manjaro .

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