Fedora Wifi not working. How to get Linux WIFI working on a laptop running Fedora
The laptop I am using is a Lenovo G710 with Broadcom wifi hardware as shown below. After a fresh install of Fedora 27 Workstation, Fedora Linux was showing no wifi adapter in the settings window.
From a Linux terminal window as root (or use sudo), run the following commands:
Check to see what kind of Wifi controller is in your computer.
sudo lspci | grep -i 802.11
01:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Limited BCM43142 802.11b/g/n (rev 01)
As you can see, my computer has a Broadcom controller, so I will be installing the Broadcom-wl kernel module. If your computer is running a different type of controller, for example Realtek, you may need research the kernel module name and repo location, but enabling it will be the same principle and process.
First we add the repositories that contain the broadcom-wl rpm by running the command below.
sudo dnf install -y https://download1.rpmfusion.org/nonfree/fedora/rpmfusion-nonfree-release-27.noarch.rpm https://download1.rpmfusion.org/free/fedora/rpmfusion-free-release-27.noarch.rpm
Now download and install the rpms.
sudo dnf install -y broadcom-wl kernel-devel
Now we apply the kernel mod.
sudo akmods --force --kernel `uname -r` --akmod wl
And finally we load the wireless module (wl).
sudo modprobe -a wl
I would recommend storing the commands in a file on your computer for future reference. Each time you update the Linux kernel by applying updates, you stand a good chance of breaking Wifi again. The good news is all you have to do to fix it is run the commnads again after applying updates. You may even want to just copy the commands to a shell script and run that as needed.
Hope this was helpful for you to get the wifi adapter working on your laptop running Fedora!
Thank You!