1y ago

Fedora 39 XFCE 20240315 doesn't recognize any wifi interfaces, even though any other linux distro I've tested works. What's going on?

I downloaded the lastest available fedora xfce from https://dl.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/live-respins/ to a 2014 macbook pro I'm using to test distros. Neither the live usb nor the installed OS recognize any interfaces where I am. However, ubuntu 23.10, linux mint 19 and macOS 14 all recognize available networks.

why? and can it be fixed?

3 comments

You will need to find out if that's the B43 or the wl driver and install it from the repos via some method (e.g. usb-to-ethernet). Both Mint and Ubuntu use the same repo, and Ubuntu usually allows some non-free firmwares and drivers in their repos, Fedora doesn't.
- This, just use your phone connected via USB to connect your pc with the internet. After that, you ether need the non-open b43 firmware files for the open b43 driver to work or install the proprietary wl driver. Most distros e.g. OpenSuse TW show how to install the firmware files in the dmsg log ("sudo dmesg" in the terminal) It seems, that in fedora, you need to download the b43 firmware files from http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43#devicefirmware and place them manually into the correct /sys/firmware subfolder (b43 and b43-open). The files are .fw

You probably need a suitable kernel module to bring that wlan device up and running.