Hary Heron works quite well on the HP NX6325. Installation is easy and basically fool proof 
Only Wlan works only halfway perfectly on the NX 6325 - once it works. In the beginning, however, in my case, it first behaved like a stubborn child - I had to convince it to really work
First, just use the “Hardware Driver” functionality that can be found in the “System - Administration” menu. Select the Wlan device, and install the additional B43 firmware (NB: You have to be connected to the Internet via LAN in order to do so).
After installation, the blue Wlan indicator LED will turn on.
If you are lucky, Wlan including WPA2 encryption will now work, you can select a HotSpot from the Network Manager Hotspot list and connect.
In my case, however, the blue Wlan indicator went on but Network Manager did not find a Hotspot. The situation did not change after a reboot - the Wlan module was loaded, the blue indicator turned on, but no Hotspots where found, no cennections possible.
My solution: I purged the b43-fwcutter package from the system and re-installed it.
Just open a terminal and enter “sudo aptitude purge b43-fwcutter” and, when finished, “sudo aptitude install b43-fwcutter“. After reboot, my Wlan worked. I had to load it, however, manually with “sudo modprobe b43” and to add “b43″ to /etc/modules. I did not investigate the reason behind this behavour, but I guess that jockey-gtk, the program that is behind the installation gui of additional hardware drivers, is still buggy. There were a lot of problems with jockey-gtk during Hardy development, this bug happend before but was fixed later, to re-appear now in the final release…..
By the way, the b43 module downloaded by b43-fwcutter is an open source, reverse engineered firmware for Broadcom devices. You can also try to use the original Broadcom firmware by purging the b43-fwcutter package and installing the bcm43xx-fwcutter instead. The later package is available from the universe repositories, so make sure you activated them.
Update: Many users of the B43 driver reported bad connection and very bad throughput. After I connected another machine to my WLan, I suffered from the same problems - it is obviously related to the still not implemented collission handling in the new B43 firmware. I solved this problem by setting my Hotspot into 802.11b mode (11 MBit). For me, this makes no difference as my Internet connection is 2 MBit, so no speed reduction anyway. However, the connection on both machines is now way more reliable and much snappier, just like a wired connection.
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14 users responded in this post
I’m reading your nx6325 related posts since the beginning and first of all I want to thank you for your step by step tutorial you wrote a year ago, it was very helpful.
What I want to ask you is if you tested the wlan with ndiswrapper against bcm43xx in previous Ubuntu versions. Since I’ve got this laptop only ndiswrapper worked almost perfect.
Now I want to upgrade to Hardy Heron but I’m afraid that wlan won’t work.
Also I’ve read something about ndiswrapper “banned” from using Linux kernel >2.6.24. (as I understood it can’t be used without a kernel patch)
Hello Serban,
if you have enough space left, why don’t you install Hardy parallel to Gutsy? That’s how I do it, I always have a stable partition for work, and another for testing.
You just fire up the installation CD and go with the suggestion that the installer gives you. The installer will automatically create space for a new partition and install Hardy on this new partition. So in case Hardy will not work, you can alsways boot into your old Gutsy partition.
For the WLan issue: What is your current Ubuntu version? Gutsy? Or Feisty?
Hi
like Serban, i’m reading your nx6325 posts since the beginning, are very useful.
I used all the time the ndiswrapper because (is just my observation) the linux driver works, but the signal is not so strong like the one from windows (i do not know why, is just my observation).
For ndiswrapper i used is the online toll - http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=405990
however, in ubuntu 8.04, there is no need for ndiswrapper (it works but i consider that is not needed anymore), the signal is very strong… and i didn’t have any problems to install the linux driver.
Thanks a lot, once again.
I was eagerly waiting for your blog…now I can install Hardy.
Hello,
Now I’m using Gusty (with ndiswrapper) but like gdx I observed that ndiswrapper works better that bcm43xx (better bandwidth and works better with WEP and WPA).
I will install Hardy for a test but I don’t have time right now and I was very curious if bcm43xx works better. Also I’ve read that ndiswrapper was “banned” from kernel >2.6.24.
But if you say you’ve tested Hardy and it works with bcm43xx that’s good news.
Thanks again,
Regards,
Serban
Serban,
the bcm43xx firmware is the original Broadcom firmware.
So in theory, there CANT be any difference in bandwith etc. between ndiswrapper/Windows driver and the bcm43xx solution as both use exactly the same code.
The b43 firmware however, is another story - this is the reverse-engineered open source version of bcm43xx.
In either case, you can go both ways with Hardy - b43 can be replaced with bcm43xx (which is the same firmware as with the ndiswrapper / Windows solution) easily.
I wish you folks much success, let us know if you succeeded.
Problem!
I just installed Hardy. I dont have a wired internet connection…and Ndiswrapper isn’t woking anymore.
I used to follow your instructions from the Feisty install guide. Is there anyway I can install b43 offline??
Hello Manishk,
I am sorry to hear this.
Unfortunately, you need LAN access for installation of the b43 driver, as the firmware will be downloaded during install.
Might also possible to do this manually and to load the kernel module manually, but somehow you need to get to the firmware. I can put links to b43-fwcutter and the firmware here to the site, but this will not help you much, obviously, when you can not move the files to your notebook.
hi, i’m reading your blog for a very long time.
it was always a help for me…
before hardy i used the ndiswrapper for my wlan….
since hardy i have no problems with the b43 driver.
But i do not use networkmanager, i use WICD. its available in the repository
with this nice toll i have no problems with wlan (wpa works, and peap-tkip works fine too!!!! )
Manishk,
you asked for a source to manually download the b43 firmware (your comments from yesterday are lost as I last night migrated all machines to Hardy and new hardware and therefore had to freeze the database).
Just have a look at this page here:
http://linuxwireless.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
You can download the firmware there and put it on a USB stick for later use.
You can also copy /lib/firmware/b43* to a USB stick, that might also be useful when you need to reinstall your Wlan. However, I have not tested if and how the kernel recognises if you simply copy the b43 stuff in/lib/firmware - I think you need at least to run modprobe b43 and depmod -a in order to load the module into the kernel.
If you want to install the old bcm43xx driver, also make sure to remove the blacklist entry for it in /etc/modules.d/blacklist and blacklist the b43 driver instead.
[...] If you experience problems when trying to connect to a Hot-Spot althiugh the blue WLan indicator is on, you might need to clean and re-install the WLan driver. It is an easy and quick solution, as you can see yourself here. [...]
Hello,
Finally I had time to do some wireless tests on 8.04. I’ve tested both b43 and ndiswrapper and the results (in my case) are similar to those on 7.10.
After doing some reading on b43 and ndiswrapper I decided to make a small test (so I won’t be needed to talk only from observations)
I’ve tested these two in similar conditions: same place, same channels, same compressed files.
The results:
Bandwidth:
b43: 0.7 - 1.5 MB/s (depending on channel)
ndiswrapper: ~2.6 (on all channels)
No. of channels supported (#iwlist eth1 channels):
b43: 11
ndiswrapper: 14
Why? I can’t explain (I observed this when I tried to connect to channel 13 with b43 and it never succeeded)
Connection failures (subjective opinion):
b43: ~50 %
ndiswrapper: rarely.
I don’t understand why the number of supported channels isn’t the same.
I don’t know why the bandwidth is different on different channels (1, 7, 11) in case of b43.
I don’t say that this results are conclusive but if I didn’t missed any major factor they should be reproductable.
Also similar behavior I saw on a Dell Insp. 6400N that has a Broadcom card (I don’t know exactly the chipset).
I hope this helps somehow. There are a lot of things I can’t explain. If you have time to do some experiments I’m looking forward to see your results.
Thanks again for your support,
Best Regards,
Serban
Hello Seban,
thanks a lot for your efforts - your test results perfectly confirm the problem of the not working interference mitigation in the B43 driver.
As far as I understand it, this means that the B43 driver is much more dependend on a very good connection to the HotSpot and bandwith is being hampered very hard as soon as there are other concurrent radio sources on the same or a neighbour frequency.
So that would explain your results very well.
http://wireless.kernel.org/en/users/Drivers/b43
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