Beautlif

When in Fedora 6 and 7, I use ndiswrapper to enable the Broadcom wireless chip in my laptop. This method has some drawbacks, and the most obvious one is that you have to redo the compiling and installing processes of ndiswrapper AS LONG AS the linux kernel is updated.

After upgrading to Fedora 8, I use another solution described in this page, which needs no more effort after installing the firmware of wireless chip into /lib/firmware.

Briefly:

Determine which version of firmware you need by command "dmesg | grep Broadcom". In my case, the output tells me that I need version 4.
Download and decompress the corresponding firmware and fwcutter
Compile and install fwcutter
Change to the directory that the firmware is decompressed to in step 2

Extract and install the firmware by a command like "sudo b43-fwcutter -w /lib/firmware wl_apsta.o"
Change to /lib/firmware and make sure the installed firmware is readable by ANYONE by a command like "sudo chmod 755 b43"
Startup wireless chip by command "sudo /sbin/ifup wlan0" and enjoy it