While I love my Dell XPS 1330 as an Ubuntu laptop, I’ve been growing quite tired of my Broadcom wireless card that came in it (I swore it had Intel wifi when I bought it). It requires downloading drivers to work (this can lead to a bit of a bootstrapping problem), and seems to frequently drop connections or have issues connecting.
I’m assuming this is due to Broadcom’s poor drivers, particularly 64-bit (I remember kernel panics and lack of WPA2 in the not-too-distant past), and was assuming an Intel card would clear my problems right up.
Has anyone had problems with Broadcom and fixed them by switching to Intel? If so, could you offer any suggestions as to if I might want the Intel 4965, 5100, or 5300 card?
Thanks, dear Ubuntu Planet and other readers!
I’m assuming this is due to Broadcom’s poor drivers, particularly 64-bit (I remember kernel panics and lack of WPA2 in the not-too-distant past), and was assuming an Intel card would clear my problems right up.
Has anyone had problems with Broadcom and fixed them by switching to Intel? If so, could you offer any suggestions as to if I might want the Intel 4965, 5100, or 5300 card?
Thanks, dear Ubuntu Planet and other readers!
My current laptop has intel 5100 which is pretty much rocksolid. a plus is that 5100 is capable of wirless-N.
Yet even now, in Ubuntu 10.04, an installed Ubuntu is unable to find and install the same package. Getting a working Broadcom driver seems to require a wired connection, even though a complete package is present on the CD.
However, when purchasing a laptop myself I made sure that the video and the wifi were Intel. Great choice, as they work out of the box.
I yanked the Broadcom that came with my M1330 out quickly and replaced it with an Intel 3945 ABG card and it's been flawless.
I recently got a Studio 14Z which came with a Broadcom G-only card (which was the only option, is this 2006?) and it would work for a bit and then totally crash the closed-source driver. The STA driver worked a bit better, but replacing it with a 5100 AGN card was what really did the trick. Worked great.
Sadly I had to return the 14Z because Dell's stupid site doesn't tell you that you don't get WWAN antennas unless you pop the extra $50 for custom case color, but I'll likely get another one soon.