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Summary

When a user with a Broadcom wireless adapter installs Ubuntu, they have to manually install bcm43xx-fwcutter and follow through extracting the firmware which new users may have trouble with.

Rationale

The new version of bcm43xx-fwcutter will download the firmware automatically so it will be much easier for new users if this is done for them at install while still giving a choice to download the firmware or not giving info about legal issues etc in the same style as the binary drivers by default or the dirty codecs.

Use cases

Stevo has bought a new laptop, wants to remove Windows and install Ubuntu. He doesn't have much experience in Ubuntu or Linux but much prefers how Ubuntu looks and the security aspect. When he installs Ubuntu he finds his wireless does not work and doesn't know how to fix this.

Many other use cases are the same principle as this, it is not obvious to install bcm43xx-fwcutter to get wireless to work even if the user does know they have a bcm43xx style wifi adapter.

Scope

Not sure of the packages to be modified but a front-end to bcm43xx-fwcutter in the installer would be nice and perhaps adding the package to a meta-package or the installed by default list in the installer. Perhaps someone else could give some guidance on this?

Design

As above. A simple GUI front end for fetching the firmware in Ubiquity is all that's needed, then a quick rmmod bcm43xx && modprobe bcm43xx should work. Ideally it would be best to ship the firmware with Ubuntu but as I understand it that can't be done? Otherwise this is the next best way and just requires a working wired internet connection before the firmware can be downloaded.

Implementation

Everyone with a Broadcom wifi adapter already has to manually install bcm43xx-fwcutter, agree to the firmware auto-download (earlier than Feisty the firmware has to be sourced manually) then run bcm43xx-fwcutter installing the firmware in the correct location. This isn't immediately obvious and requires some (perhaps frustrating) web searches to find this information.

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