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Nmanny
Asked: 2018-09-21 07:47:05 +0800 CST

MacBook can’t find WiFi for Ubuntu 18.04

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I have installed Ubuntu 18.04 on my mid-2009 MacBook Pro, however, I am unable to even search for a wireless internet connection.

I have searched past question from this site and askubuntu re; no wi-fi adapter found, and found they either refer to past versions of Ubuntu or their implementation strategies (e.g. sudo update) does not to MacBooks or don’t work because they rely on internet connection that I do not have (e.g. sudo...reinstall kernel source).

wireless macbook

6 Answers

  1. I think I have the exact same hardware (13 inches?) and OS installed, and I too had problems with my wifi card. The easiest workaround is to have an Ethernet connection while you install Ubuntu and check the "install proprietary drivers", but I guess it's too late for that one.

    Still, you will need an internet connection through Ethernet to solve this, as you have to download and install the drivers.

    If you open "Software & Updates" and go to the "Additional Drivers" tab, what do you see? It should look similar to my screenshot.

    enter image description here

    Make sure "Using Broadcom 802.11 ..." is selected, probably it says "Do not use this device". Once you click the other radio button and then hit apply, it should download and install the driver.

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  2. What worked with my late-2008 Macbook Pro and Ubuntu Mate:

    1. Use Ethernet cable
    2. Confirm hardware: lspci -vvnn | grep -A 9 Network -> Broadcom 4322 chipset
    3. Install proprietary driver instead of b43

    For some reason, Ubuntu's "Additional Driver" showed 0 option to update from that menu. Thus, I followed the manual update steps described in the documentation, more precisely these commands:

    sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get --reinstall install bcmwl-kernel-source

sudo modprobe -r b43 ssb wl brcmfmac brcmsmac bcma
sudo modprobe wl

    After that, without reboot, the network icon started listing the wifi networks and I could join my network.

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  3. The top answer is the right answer, however, in my experience the download/install gets interrupted, and the command to accomplish this is much more reliable:

    sudo ubuntu-drivers autoinstall

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  4. everyone! Interesting topic here...

    I wanted to share with some of my experience though. Some computers do not have Ethernet (for example my MacBook Air and HP Z2 Mini Workstation). And after installing Ubuntu the Wi-fi adapter (external USB one in case with Z2) were not visible/usable without respective drivers installed...

    So, I found out that my Meizu 15 (Android) phone helped me out. I switched on Internet sharing by USB and appeared immediately as Ethernet connection on both systems, then I was able to install all the drivers that I needed :)

    Enjoy and good luck with Ubuntu!

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  5. I got the same problem on my mac mini. I went into the additional drivers tab as mentioned above and the specific driver was already checked. So I checked the "Do not use the device" and restarted. After rebooting the wireless controller works like a charm.

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  6. In some situations, including with Ubuntu derivatives (PopOS and/or very similar hardware, the way to handle this is different.

    There are three ways to handle the Broadcom cards depending on what you have

    This page has a great chart that shows (as of October 2020) which driver you need. It also goes over very specific and detailed steps for what to do to get that driver working, including what to do if you have to download something but can't get online because you don't have a driver for the card.

    In short, you:

    • Figure out which card you have: lspci -nn -d 14e4:
    • Follow the instructions for firmware-b43-installer, bcmwl-kernel-source, or a special case.
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