OK...so reading some of these threads isn't a whole lotta help here. I have a HP Pavillion dv6000 laptop wit that broadcom wireless card. Now I have ndiswrapper installed on my system...What are the next steps I should do to try and get a wireless connection w/ blue light on, going? It also looks like my wireless is on eth1

I've downloaded the bcm43xx-fwcutter-006.tar.bz2 file...needin some help on where to go from this point?

There may be some confusion here. Ndiswrapper and bcm43xx are two distinct drivers and have nothing to do with each other. You can have them both installed on one machine, but if you try to use them both at the same time, you've got problems. The fwcutter program you downloaded is for bcm43xx only, so if you are trying to get ndiswrapper to work, you don't need it.

Ok...so I have deleted both... I am needing to figure out which one will work best to get my Broadcom wireless working. Fyi...I have Fedora core 6 on my system.

The real deciding factor here is what chipset you've got in your wireless card. Most of them work decently with bcm43xx, but the 4318 has some significant issues and it is probably best done with ndiswrapper.

By the way, there is no harm in having both bcm43xx and ndiswrapper installed on the same machine (I've got them both on my laptop). You just can't have both modules loaded at the same time because they will conflict.
You have my condolences...... Fedora is a decent distro but it has two rather significant issues in my opinion. First, their stock kernels are compiled with settings that can make ndiswrapper difficult to impossible to use. However, it really depends on what Windows driver you need to use and many people do successfully use ndiswrapper under Fedora. The second issue is that Fedora is a gigantic beta test and they routinely do things that break systems. For example, the recently release FC7 dropped bcm43xx and replaced it with the experimental b43 driver, which requires different firmware than bcm43xx. This caught a LOT of people by surprise.

OK...what is your recommendation?

That kind of depends on what you want to use your computer for. The *buntus have a large following for a good reason, they are generally a decent desktop distro. There is lots of help available and it is unlikely that you'll run into a problem that hasn't been seen before. However, the *buntus are heavily dependent on GUI tools, which means you don't really get your fingers dirty with the inner working of Linux.

If you do want to really get your hands dirty, there is none better to learn than Slackware. It takes the complete opposite philosophy from Fedora in that Slackware doesn't include stuff that isn't tested and stable. That can make it seem a touch out of date at times, but I've never had a Slackware release bust any of my systems. That said, Slackware doesn't hold your hand in any way shape or form. You have to resolve your own software dependencies and you may end up compiling a fair bit of software from source code. That said, the Slackware community is strong and exceedingly helpful.

If you liked Fedora, you might look at CentOS, which is repackaged RHEL. Of course it will suffer from the same problems as RHEL, and it isn't really aimed at the desktop. You also might look at Mandriva or Suse if you like Fedora as they use a similar package system.

If you do, and can read this...thankx for the info. I am a bit new to linux. Yet I have been craving to really get into it for years. I spent 4 years in Seattle, Wa. and one of my personal goals was to stay away from computers...as well as TV, and the internet. Now I have my own laptop...and I am pretty much learning as I go...or even trying to pick back up on the knowledge that I have known since a little boy.

Elvis
aka ENDI1111

Those are certainly good, attainable goals. What I found useful as I started out on Linux was setting up my laptop to dual-boot Windows and Linux. As I gradually learned Linux, I booted into Windows less and less often. I still have it on my laptop, but it is for a few rare programs where for reasons outside of my control, I have to use a Windows program.

Please post your thread in only one forum. Posting a single thread in the most relevant forum will make it easier for members to help you and will keep the discussion in one place. This thread is being closed because it is a duplicate.

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