Along with purchasing a few Brax3 phones, I am trying to swap over to Linux and try to take more care for mine and my family’s privacy. With that comes the learning curve.
I have an old Dell Inspiron 1750 laptop, which I have booted Linux Mint 22.1 Cinnamon from a USB drive. Upon booting, there are no network connections, just a default wired connection of which I don’t use. If I browse to Administration > Driver Manager, it will automatically show broadcom-sta-dkms (Version 6.30.223.271-23ubuntu1) and I can select Apply Changes. Once finished, I can connect to our wireless connection and it automatically discovers our printer on the network. I have also used the browser and can load various webpages.
The issue comes into play when I boot from the internal harddrive, which I have installed Linux Mint on to. Upon booting, there are no network connections, just like booting from the USB. However, when I browse to Administration > Driver Manager, I am now prompted with “You appear to be offline. Connect to the internet or insert the Linux Mint installation disc (or USB stick).” I insert the USB stick, the computer recognizes that it is inserted, but when I click “OK” it just gives me the same prompt of being offline and connect internet or insert disc/USB.
Using some online help forums and Grok, I was able to connect to the internet, however, it doesn’t stay setup through a reboot or power cycle.
I don’t understand why the USB which has the proper driver to work when booted from the USB, can’t be used to set up the connection when booting from the harddrive.
Pretty new to Linux myself but if its looking for usb stick maybe its not installed completely on hard drive? I made a Ventoy stick, pretty easy, and installed on several machines no problem. Hope this helps.
I can search for “broadcom-sta” on the USB and a few .deb files come up. I tried installing one, it said it was successful, but still no wireless connection available. I tried rebooting after also.
Run this command on a terminal : lspci -nn -d 14e4:
This command in most cases will let you know which broadcom cart you have. From there you can install the drivers.
There are forums for linux mint were you can find more info, once you know what cart you have.
In my case I change the wifi cart on the motherboard. I install one with a Intel chip set. In 98% of the cases they work. No drivers to install. Hope this help.
In my experience laptops with broadcom WiFi chips have been janky and it was always a downstream result of Broadcom’s licensing policy. Distros were restricted from redistributing it and I needed to install a “firmware cutter” to get a binary out of a windows driver package.
I’ll bet you a dollar you probably just need to edit /etc/modules and reboot with the bcm module enabled.
This won’t help your immediate problem but it’s just an item to keep in mind with some linux distributions - Sometimes a particular Linux distro that you install comes with certain services - like Wifi , bluetooth or printing shut off by default. You will look through the menus, system settings or icon status bar and you won’t find anything about them. You will have to visit that distro’s online forum to find out how to switch those services on. It will usually be certain commands you’ll have to type in the terminal app. If its “init system” (the Linux version of windows’s “Administrative Tools”) happens to be SystemD then the command will be “systemctl enable + whatever service” and then “systemctl start + whatever service” After doing that, is when they will appear. Sometimes - you’ll also have to do a system reboot before they’ll appear.
“it doesn’t stay setup through a reboot or power cycle.”
I believe the term is “persistent” - the service doesn’t remain persistant after boot up. It’s possible that you may have to go in (in sudo or SU mode) and edit some config file to make that service persistent. The distro’s forum should have instructions on which file to edit and how to do it. Oh, a term you’ll run into with that is “commenting” or “uncommenting” - as you scroll down the config files contents, you’ll see certain lines having this symbol at their beginning “#” Sometimes, that symbol blocks the system from reading what comes behind it (which could be just regular englsh instructions for you to read) and other times that symbol blocks a system command from the system being able to read and execute it. In your situation, there might be a system command on one of the lines in that conf file that makes the service you want on “persistent.” So in order to turn it on, you would have to delete that "#’ from the beginning of that line and save the file. The act of you removing that “#” from the beginning of that line - is called “uncommenting”
They explain how to make a live USB so u can install Linux Mint on the same HD as Win 11. I just did that in Win 10 and found out that now Windows includes a way for u to cleanup that HD and shrink the Windows partition before u install Linux. I’m not as familiar with Windows and had to do a search with Brave to find the commands which were mostly new to me.
First thing u want to do in Win as it will take several hours is a disk defrag. Windows wants to be first and a re-install of Windows will take over your entire drive again. So if u need to re-install Win then do that before u install Linux.
Brave AI is where I got Windows instructions to shrink the partition so that there is new space for Linux. This details it for Windows 11:
Shrink Windows 11 Partition
To shrink a Windows 11 partition for Linux, you should first boot into Windows and use the built-in Disk Management tool, as this is the safest and most reliable method.
Steps to shrink the partition from Windows:
Search for “Create and format hard disk partitions” (or “partition”) in the Start menu and open the Disk Management tool.
Right-click on the C drive (or the partition you wish to shrink) and select Shrink Volume.
Enter the amount of space to shrink in MB (e.g., 50000 MB for 50 GB) and click Shrink.
If BitLocker is enabled, you must disable encryption first, as it prevents shrinking.
Important Considerations:
Free Space Requirement: The amount of space you can shrink is limited by the unmovable files on the drive; ensure you have sufficient free space available.
Alternative Tools: If Windows cannot shrink the partition due to unmovable files, users recommend booting into a Linux Live USB to use GParted, or using third-party tools like EaseUS Partition Master or Macrium Reflect.
Backup: It is highly recommended to create a full backup (e.g., using Clonezilla) before resizing partitions to prevent data loss.
I was having trouble a month ago or so getting Linux Mint to dual boot Windows 10. The installer kept failing. Usually it goes right on beside Win so hopefully u have no problems. I wound up installing Ubuntu next to Windows and then the bootloader did not have Windows. What I did was boot into the installed Ubuntu and have it rescan the HD for available operating systems. Then re-installed GRUB. Their forums are a good resource for help on that and so is Brave internet search.
Also, if u think Win is messed up and as a last resort u wanna restore your Windows (they put the Win restore on your HD in another partition that is NTFS (leave that if u start using gparted to re-partition things) so u can always restore Windows. I found out a couple months ago restoring Windows from 10 years ago without having that restore partition and just using the online installer that M$ put their product key in the computer BIOS so u are safe even without a restore partition!
