CentOS 6.0 on Inspiron 1525 (BCM4312)

Long awaited CentOS 6.0 was release few days back. Thank you CentOS Team!

If you haven’t downloaded it yet, please do so because this is really cool. The biggest attraction for me was two new minimal mode which does exactly what it claims. Default minimal mode on x64 system installs with 197 packages only (still some bloatware but lot better than earlier).

My first test installation was on a Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop. The installation won’t start unless we pick “basic video driver”, option #2 on the first screen. The minimal desktop installed fine but wireless was broken. NetworkManager applet reported that device firmware was missing for following device.

# /sbin/lspci -vnn | grep 14e4
0c:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11b/g [14e4:4315] (rev 01)

After a bit of googling, I found the workaround to make it working.

yum install b43-fwcutter b43-openfwwf
mkdir ~/b43-driver; cd ~/b43-driver
wget http://downloads.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar jxf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware/ wl_apsta_mimo.o

And reboot. Hope this helps someone.

Cheers,
- Sudhaker

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15 Responses to CentOS 6.0 on Inspiron 1525 (BCM4312)

  1. Kevin says:

    Thanks for posting this.

    Worked like a charm on a Dell Inspiron 1545. Spent time trying to get this working with 5.6, ran into this and install 6.0

    Works perfectly!

  2. Ben Alcala says:

    Worked with Scientific Linux 6.1 on my Acer Extensa 4420.

    Thanks for putting this great information out there!

  3. Dan Zwerg says:

    Worked perfectly with Dell Inspiron 1545 running CentOS 6. Thanks!

  4. Cory says:

    This works on my Inspiron 1545 running CentOS 6 but it is VERY slow. When I’m plugged in via cable I get 10M/1.5M down/up on http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest but when I’m using my wireless I’m lucky to get 1M/100K down/up on the same test. I run the same test on my wife’s Dell Inspiron 6000 laptop running WinXP and she gets the 10M/1.5M down/up.

    So I’m wondering if there are still some issues somewhere.

    • Cory says:

      And just to clarify, the wireless speed test was normal when I was running Ubuntu last month.

      • Atis says:

        Hi,

        I’ve just installed CentOS 6.2 on my Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop and with the standard install I experienced the same. The WiFi speed was far slower, but with the above solution I got back the original 15M/1M speed.

        Here is my lspci output:
        0b:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN (rev 01)

        Btw. thanks for this, it helped a lot.

        Atis

  5. yo9fah says:

    Worked perfectly with Acer Extensa 5220 running CentOS 6.2! Thanks, mate!

  6. Chris says:

    Thanks for posting this – just used it on my Dell XPS M1330 with the same wireless chip as yours – worked beautifully!

    Cheers.

  7. alijan says:

    Works for DELL latitude D630 with BCM4312
    Tkanks

  8. DonM says:

    I have an HP Pavilion laptop with Centos 6.2, and I tried 4 other procedures that did not work. Yours was the simplest and the only one that worked. Thanks for posting.

  9. Simon Jewell says:

    Worked first time without any problems on my Dell Mini 10v and Centos 6.2 – many thanks!

  10. JustinF says:

    Worked perfectly for me, thanks! Dell Studio 1535 with CentOS 6.2.

  11. Bob says:

    works great! Really appreciate the help… I have a windows 7 laptop… but I always reach for my centos 6 laptop and drag the cat6 cable all over the place… but not anymore :) very greatful…

  12. Mårten says:

    Wonderful! Le me join in with the rest and thank you for this simple and effective post!

    I’m setting up a HP550 laptop, wih the following lspci output:

    10:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11a/b/g [14e4:4312] (rev 02).
    Now I’ll be heading over to your post about auomatic login since the compuer will be used by my seven-year-old niece.

  13. hugoo99 says:

    Worked with Scientific Linux 6.1 on my Acer Extensa 4420

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