Broadcom STA Wireless Driver (wl) 6.30.223.271

This driver, commonly called wl or broadcom-sta, hasn’t seen a version update from Broadcom since 2016. It’s included here specifically because it’s still the only working option for a specific range of older Broadcom Wi-Fi chipsets whose hardware never received full support in the open-source b43 and brcmsmac kernel drivers.

When You Actually Need This

Check lspci -k for your wireless chipset before reaching for this driver. Most modern Broadcom Wi-Fi hardware works fine with the in-kernel brcmfmac or brcmsmac drivers included in every current distribution. This proprietary wl driver is specifically for the older BCM4311, BCM4312, BCM4321, and BCM4322 chip families that predate good open-source support.

Installation via Distribution Packages

Rather than building from Broadcom’s original source archive, nearly every distribution packages this driver pre-patched to build against current kernels via DKMS, since the unmaintained upstream source doesn’t compile against modern kernel APIs without patching:

# Debian/Ubuntu
sudo apt install broadcom-sta-dkms

# Arch (via AUR helper)
yay -S broadcom-wl-dkms

Why It’s Still Listed

Distribution maintainers keep patching this abandoned driver forward because there is no alternative for the hardware it supports, the chipset is too old for brcmfmac/brcmsmac and Broadcom never open-sourced a replacement. If your laptop’s Wi-Fi silently doesn’t work after a fresh install and lspci shows one of the chip IDs above, this is very likely the fix.

Verify Your Download

Use your distribution’s package signing verification (apt/pacman handle this automatically); this driver is not distributed as a standalone signed archive from Broadcom.