Solved Help with drivers for Macbook mid 2012 (Broadcom 4331 Wi-Fi card)

re600900ra

re600900ra

Hello dear users of the excellent FreeBSD operating system. I am 32 years old, and I live in Russia, in Voronezh. During a long journey into the world of information technology, since childhood I had to study a lot and configure myself. But I was always looking for something holistic, something complete, and just working. I've given up on the GNU/Linux zoo for many years, and I use FreeBSD OS on my home server and wherever I can. I just really liked her, her logic, philosophy, and so on. The only thing is that there is a great lack of support in Russian (in Slavic), and support from equipment manufacturers. And more recently, about a year ago, I became the proud owner of a mid-2012 Macbook with Nvidia 650m on board. I managed to set up everything, even bluetooth, but the trouble is, the wireless network could not be started. I understand that the question is only 1000 rubles, and I will be able to use a lot of USB Wi-Fi, but I need to finish what I started. It's a matter of my inner beliefs. Do you understand? I know that there is such a thing as ndis - driver, but there is no ndisgen on my FreeBSD 14, and I can't figure out where to get this program from? Is this a kernel module? Or should it be compiled from the source code? I just can't find the source codes. And wiki writes that the last ndisgen was under FreeBSD 13. In general, I am ready to provide any information. And so, of course, I would like FreeBSD to be and remain completely free and independent, as well as gain great popularity among ordinary users, and business tasks, multimedia, and design and installation work would be solved on it. And for the people themselves to build exactly such a version of the operating system that would be truly UNIX Like and Unix Life. Well, so that in beauty, and so that the soul creates, creates, creates. Well, in general, like MAC OS X Snow Leopard, but completely free. Well, I hope someone will tell me, or just support me. Thanks.

04:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Inc. and subsidiaries BCM4331 802.11a/b/g/n (rev 02)
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Welcome to The FreeBSD Forums.

Your topic is marked as Solved. Was that your intention? I see questions above.

For ndisgen(8) in FreeBSD 13.3-RELEASE: <https://man.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=ndisgen&sektion=8&manpath=FreeBSD+13.3-RELEASE>.

From ndis(4): remove as previous announced · freebsd/freebsd-src@bfc9994 (2021-01-25):

nids(4) was a clever idea in the early 2000's when the market was flooded with 10/100 NICs with Windows-only drivers, but that hasn't been the case for ages and the driver has had no meaningful maintenance in ages. It only supports Windows-XP era drivers. …
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Glancing at the various changes (alongside the deletions): a patch for you to add ndis to FreeBSD 14⋯ might be possible, for someone with the skill set.

However: will it be stable, and reasonably performant? (Not tested by the Release Engineering team, so who else, before you, might have tested the non-supported combination?)

What will you do when 15.0 becomes preferable? And so on.

re600900ra said:
USB Wi-Fi,
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Gut feeling: this will be not only affordable and simple, it will be far more immediately pleasing – and reasonably future-proof.
 
Cath O'Deray said:
Your topic is marked as Solved. Was that your intention? I see questions above.
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Well, as solved, rather relatively solved. I still haven't been able to get 4331 started, but my intuition tells me that the decision is close and it will soon become a reality. In the meantime, I use USB Wi-Fi from Realtek, here:
Bus /dev/usb Device /dev/ugen0.3: ID 0bda:8812 Realtek Semiconductor Corp. RTL8812AU 802.11a/b/g/n/ac 2T2R DB WLAN Adapter
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And so I have a lot of questions, the ocean and a small lake. I left Gentoo GNU/Linux a few years ago, because I realized what a zoo it is. I strive for integrity myself, and the requirement for the operating system is the same - a friendly interface, a holistic structure, and convenient use of both the server version and for home. And also to be modern, and not from the Stone Age at the dawn of information technology.
 
Cath O'Deray said:
Gut feeling: this will be not only affordable and simple, it will be far more immediately pleasing – and reasonably future-proof.
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Yes, I understand. But now we are looking to replace the internal Wi-Fi 4331 with a more supported option (miniPCI-E other). That's if you can't get it started.
 
Running FreeBSD on a MacBook sounds wild. I will surely test that myself in due time.
The hardware from Apple with the system of FreeBSD feels like a dandy user experience.
 
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