July 17th, 2026

How to Install Broadcom Drivers on Linux/Fix Slow Broadcom Wifi on Linux.

If your wireless connection is very slow or non-existent on Linux with a Broadcom card, this guide may help you. This guide is guaranteed to work for Ubuntu 24.04 and Linux Mint 22, along with Linux Mint 21 and Ubuntu 22.04 as a result.

These instructions have been tested on a 2007 iMac, and a Dell Inspiron 1440, and 1420. It seems that older Broadcom cards need special help to work.

I had a very hard time finding this information. I can’t quite remember how I found it, though I believe I may have been specifying my 2007 iMac in the search query. I ended up looking in my terminal command history to find it. My hope is that the search engines will find this post and link to it as a top result instead of the posts that didn’t seem to work.

I have quite a few laptops in my collection of computers that have Broadcom cards. Most laptops work straight out of the box with wireless on Linux. Broadcom wifi cards do NOT most of the time. Sometimes they will be very slow. Other times they won’t work, even if you install the driver package from Ubuntu themselves. It’s a pain.

You will need an Ethernet cable for this. That way you can get the laptop online. You will also need to use the terminal. Some people are scared of it. If you copy-paste what I have here, you should be fine.

First, update the system.

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get upgrade

Then, reboot.

From there, purge the system of the two drivers you don’t want. If they aren’t there, apt will tell you.

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source

sudo apt-get purge firmware-b43-installer

sudo reboot now

Then, install the good drivers.

sudo apt-get install broadcom-sta-dkms

Most likely, the system won’t detect the new driver right away, so reboot it again. If the wifi card isn’t picked up, then run these commands. At this point, if memory serves, you can unplug the Ethernet cable as well:

sudo modprobe -rf wl

sudo modprobe -vv wl

sudo update-initramfs -c -k all

sudo reboot now

Once that's done, you should have a functioning Broadcom wifi card.