Q4OS Forum

Miksa

Member

Registered: 2020-11-12

Posts: 4

not-free firmware not included in Q4OS 4.1 Gemini?

Hello,

I am new to Linux based desktops (just used Mint on a second PC for about a year.)

Recently came across Q4OS and was very impressed how fast and stable Q4OS 3.12 was on my old Dell Vosto laptop. Great job!

Also I tried Q4OS 4.1 Gemin but it didn't recognize Broadcom Wi-Fi. Firmware for b43 driver was not included though 3.12 worked fine.

I wonder if non-free firmware will be included in future Q4OS 4.1 releases. Or it's to be added manually (doing that on offline PC without internet was not a simple task and took me some time to figure that out.)

Thanks.

q4osteam

Q4OS Team

Registered: 2015-12-06

Posts: 4,501

Website

Re: not-free firmware not included in Q4OS 4.1 Gemini?

Including Broadcom drivers into Q4OS Gemini by default is uncertain at the moment. Anyway you can install the drivers from repositories:
$ sudo apt install firmware-b43-installer

Miksa

Member

Registered: 2020-11-12

Posts: 4

Re: not-free firmware not included in Q4OS 4.1 Gemini?

thanks. as i mentioned the issue was that Wi-Fi was the only network interface on the laptop and "apt install" didn't work without network connection.

Miksa

Member

Registered: 2020-11-12

Posts: 4

Re: not-free firmware not included in Q4OS 4.1 Gemini?

actually, "apt install" was less issue. the main issue was that "firmware-b43-installer" required network connection to download Broadcom binary so "br43-fw-cutter" could extract firmware files.