Broadcom wireless and channels 12/13

Great! Good work. Does it also bring other improvements apart from the channels?

Great news!!! Thanks a lot for sharing this!

Does it also bring other improvements apart from the channels?

I'm checking

http://www.broadcom.com/docs/linux_sta/README_6.30.223.271.txt

Thanks Jared. The release notes are not very informative, unfortunately. They only mention support for 3.19 kernels. I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Just for curiosity: who was the genius who thought that selling a Linux laptop with proprietary wifi drivers was a good idea?

Just for curiosity: who was the genius who thought that selling a Linux laptop with proprietaries wifi drivers was a good idea?

They have explained that they did not have a choice. It seems to me it was either sell a Linux laptop with proprietary wifi drivers or do not sell a Linux laptop. Once they show there is demand, they will get more autonomy.

Thanks a lot for the hint

The posted link to the releasenotes doesn't contain any hint at all wrt the additional channels, so without your post I wouldn't have bothered to try them out..

I can confirm that with the ...271 driver  the channels are available and usable \o/

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/bcmwl/+bug/1415880 unfortunately is not integrated (but I could drop all other patches from my distro's package)

Thanks a lot for the hint The posted link to the releasenotes doesn't contain any hint at all wrt the additional channels, so without your post I wouldn't have bothered to try them out.. I can confirm that with the ...271 driver  the channels are available and usable \o/

That's great news! I've passed along your post to Canonical to let them know we have confirmation that it makes bands 12/13 work so that they're aware that this fixes this outstanding bug. I have no ETA on when the new driver will make it into the various Ubuntu releases but will try to update you all once we have that information.

And yes, the only way we knew that this new driver was supposed to fix this issue is because we were the ones who asked Broadcom to fix this bug.

Fantastic that the channel 12/13 issue seems to be heading in the right direction. The outstanding bug for me, having followed the updates to the letter so far, is the chronic instability of bluetooth. Do we have any idea if this updated driver will fix it?

Fantastic that the channel 12/13 issue seems to be heading in the right direction. The outstanding bug for me, having followed the updates to the letter so far, is the chronic instability of bluetooth. Do we have any idea if this updated driver will fix it?

I don't know. Have you reported the bug through Dell ProSupport or at least on Launchpad? To my knowledge, our support staff haven't received calls about Bluetooth issues.

I have not, tended to assume it was common knowledge due to the various forum posts. I will make some time to report it properly.

I will make some time to report it properly.

Thanks

Thanks Andrew. It really is a problem. At the moment I cannot connect with my bluetooth devices at all, and before the connection would be extremely weak and erratic.