FIXED thanks all, installed Ubuntu which fixed it. Much obliged to all comments :-)
——————————————————
I may give it up, but just playing with an old laptop and looking at linux for the first real time and of course, the old laptop happens to have this network adapter… 🤦🏻
(BCM4313 802.11bgn). From the rabbit hole it’s a typical case, laptop tethers to phone fine. Ethernet during Debian 12 install (kde plasma). Detects my wifi but won’t connect (deactivated message).
In theory it should have been as easy as:
HTTPS://wiki.debian.org/wl or https://wiki.debian.org/brcm80211
Has to be the stupidest thing…
configuration: broadcast = yes driver = brcmsmac driverversion = 6.1.0-13-amd64 firmware = 610.812 ip = 172.20.10.5 latency = 0 link = yes multicast = yes wireless = IEEE 802.11
So, you’re talking about ensuring the wl driver is loaded, but the dump at the end of your post says it’s using brcmsmac, a different driver for the same card. Looks like you have a mix of both now? It looks like https://wiki.debian.org/wl has a little script you can use to switch between the two, maybe try that.
(I see OP already fixed it by using Ubuntu instead of Debian) When using Broadcom chips the recommended driver (b43, b43legacy, wl, …) is highly dependent on which exact chipset is used, so maybe Ubuntu by default guesses the right one for the specific chipset. The Linux Wireless project provides an overview .
