How to detect and implement wireless drivers on Gateway MX6446 Laptop?

Question

I recently installed Ubuntu on my friend's laptop because Windows wasn't running well, but the wireless hardware may not be detected, or I may not have the appropriate drivers(?). I tried these instructions but it didn't seem to have any effect after rebooting. Let me know what additional information might help to figure out what's wrong.

EDIT: lspci -nn | grep 0280 05:00.0 Network controller [0280]: Broadcom Corporation BCM4311 802.11b/g WLAN [14e4:4311] (rev 01)

sudo modprobe b43 dmesg | grep -e wlan -e b43 has given no response. I recently restarted after what's been done; there's no noticeable change. Rfkill list also gives no output.

firmware-b43-installer is already the newest version.

I found this tutorial, and an answer in it revealed this output related to the blacklist:

b43-fwcutter is already the newest version.
b43-fwcutter set to manually installed.
firmware-b43-installer is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 16 not upgraded.
timmy@timmy-MX6446:~$ cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | egrep 'bcm'
blacklist bcm43xx
timmy@timmy-MX6446:~$ # blacklist bcm43xx
timmy@timmy-MX6446:~$ sudo gedit blacklist.conf

** (gedit:3368): WARNING **: Can't load fallback CSS resource: Failed to import: The resource at '/org/gnome/adwaita/gtk-fallback.css' does not exist

** (gedit:3368): WARNING **: Can't load fallback CSS resource: Failed to import: The resource at '/org/gnome/adwaita/gtk-fallback.css' does not exist

(gedit:3368): Gt-WARNING **: Calling Inhibit failed: GDBus.Error:org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.ServiceUnknown: The name org.gnome.SessionManager was not provided by any .service files

Not sure if that helps at all. Thanks for the help so far.

Answer 1

Your Broadcom device requires non-free firmware to work correctly. If you followed the instructions you linked and installed firmware-b43-installer and rebooted, your wireless should be working. If it is not, I suggest you check the wireless switch or key combination. You can see if the device is being turned off by the switch with:

rfkill list all

If there is no hard- or soft-block, check the logs for clues; first load the driver and look for any errors or warnings:

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe b43
dmesg | grep -e wlan -e b43

Once I have more information, I will edit this answer to suggest a solution.

Answer 2

If wl driver does not work well for you, you can install b43.

sudo apt-get purge bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo apt-get install firmware-b43-installer
sudo modprobe -r wl
sudo modprobe b43

You need to uninstall wl driver because it blacklists b43.

Answer 3

Solved through this guide and following it with cat /etc/modprobe.d/* | egrep 'bcm' then cd /etc/modprobe.d/ , sudo gedit blacklist.conf and placing a # in front of blacklist bcm43xx, as according to KiLLeRfriend. Thanks for helping.