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Wi‑Fi Firmware and Drivers on Ubuntu

This article focuses on common Wi‑Fi chipsets and their firmware on Ubuntu. It guides detection, installing firmware packages, modprobe usage, and practical troubleshooting commands.

1 Detect wireless hardware

Section titled “1 Detect wireless hardware”
Terminal window
lspci -nnk | grep -i network -A3
lsusb
iw dev

Look for Intel Corporation Wireless or Broadcom strings.

2 Intel (iwlwifi) firmware

Section titled “2 Intel (iwlwifi) firmware”

Install the Intel firmware package and reload the module:

Terminal window
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y linux-firmware-iwlwifi
sudo modprobe -r iwlwifi && sudo modprobe iwlwifi

Check kernel logs for firmware loading messages:

Terminal window
dmesg | grep -i iwl
journalctl -k | tail -n 50

If the firmware file is missing, dmesg shows the exact file name (e.g., iwlwifi-ty-a0-gf-a0-59.ucode), and you can obtain it from the linux-firmware package or vendor sources.

3 Broadcom

Section titled “3 Broadcom”

Broadcom chips require different drivers depending on model. Common packages:

  • bcmwl-kernel-source — Broadcom STA (proprietary) for many chips
  • firmware-brcm80211 or in linux-firmware — for some brcm chips

Install STA driver (if recommended):

Terminal window
sudo apt update
sudo apt install -y bcmwl-kernel-source
sudo modprobe -r b43 bcma wl && sudo modprobe wl

Check dmesg for firmware messages if the interface fails to appear.

4 Enabling and connecting

Section titled “4 Enabling and connecting”

With NetworkManager:

Terminal window
nmcli device status
nmcli device wifi list
nmcli device wifi connect "SSID" password "yourpass"

With wpa_supplicant (manual): create /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf then:

Terminal window
sudo wpa_supplicant -B -i wlan0 -c /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
sudo dhclient wlan0

5 Troubleshooting checklist

Section titled “5 Troubleshooting checklist”
  1. Check rfkill: rfkill list all — unblock with sudo rfkill unblock all.
  2. Kernel messages: dmesg | grep -i firmware.
  3. Interface state: ip link, iw dev, nmcli device status.
  4. Capture logs: journalctl -u NetworkManager -n 200.
  5. Try a live kernel (booted from live USB) to exclude current installation issues.
  6. If module mismatch after kernel update, ensure linux-headers-$(uname -r) is installed and re-run DKMS builds.