Automatic detection and installation of Broadcom WiFi Modems

Every time a new person wants to make the leap into linux and the WiFi doesn’t work she/he will return to windows forever.

Every time a new person wants to work and gets a blue screen she/he will return to linux/bsd forever.

Your response is overly broad, as is the original post. All Linux distros could be better at automatic detection of hardware, and ease of installation. Given the huge number of hardware configurations out there, this is a difficult task, but when someone new to Linux tries to install it and it fails, they do tend to give up and go back to Windows. However, the installation experience continues to improve and get easier. Also, the “blue screen of death” is kind of 1990’s. Microsoft has a much better product now. For most people, it is rock solid.

It took me a few tries to get ClearLinux installed. The first thought the average person has when they install an OS isn’t “I have to go into the BIOS and turn off secure boot.” Not all of my hardware worked at first. Again, most people wouldn’t put up with it and return to Windows, where the OEM makes sure that everything does work. I persevered, and I’m glad I did.

One of the advantages of ClearLinux in particular is the existence of this forum. I check it all the time, and it provides me with a great deal of help. Without it, I would have given up too. For new users and people with limited Linux experience, this resource is invaluable.

This is not a problem unique to Clear Linux. We cannot do this for all models because some of the combinations of Broadcom drivers and firmware are not opensource, or completely unmaintained. The combinations that are upstream/opensource are included in Clear Linux OS.

The best we can do for the other versions is document what is reasonable and rely on community experience: https://docs.01.org/clearlinux/latest/tutorials/broadcom.html.

I tried three times to install, the first two times I failed because THE SCREENSAVER IS ON IN THE INSTALLING TRIAL ENVIROMENT so every time the screen turned off I assumed the installation freezed the machine so I turned it off and on. And I know it must happen a lot so I ask whoever can change that to set the screen off tweak to off.

Pop Os detected and installed my modem, Ubuntu Studio also. Clear Linux should do too.