Getting Wi-Fi to work on an old Macbook Pro (Ubuntu)

Every time I install Linux—in this case, Ubuntu on an older Macbook Pro from 2010/2011—there’s a struggle to get the Wi-Fi working. This time was no exception. Luckily, I could tether my iPhone to get online.

Anyway, let me jot down how I usually find the right drivers so you (and I, next time) can save some time.

1. Identify your hardware First, check exactly what hardware you’re dealing with by running this in the terminal:

 lspci -nn | grep 0280 

In my case, the output was: Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4322 802.11a/b/g/n Wireless LAN Controller.

2. Find the right driver I consulted an LLM, and it suggested that the open-source b43 driver is the best choice for stability on modern kernels. Hard to argue with that.

3. Installation To install the firmware for the b43 driver, run these commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer
reboot

And that's it! After the reboot, your Wi-Fi should be up and running, and you're ready to surf the web.