I don’t feel confident saying anything about things like battery or data transfer performance of the Broadcom and Intel modules. If you’re interested in replacing the Wi-Fi module on your laptop, start by opening up the laptop’s back, locate and identify the Wi-Fi module, and estimate how confident you are that you’re looking at the Wi-Fi module and could manage to replace it. Swapping out the module in my laptop was a simple matter of removing a few screws, loosening the antenna wire, removing the old and sliding the new back into the socket. The M.2 NGFF factor sockets is a standard socket that you’ll find in many popular Linux laptops including the Dell XPS line of developer laptops. Intel’s M.2 NGFF connector differs slightly from Broadcom’s, but both fit in the same standard M.2 socket. For my Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro’s Broadcom BCM94352Z Wi-Fi module, an Intel 7260NGW M.2 NGFF module is a good replacement for the default module. While still a proprietary option Intel’s more permissive distribution license makes its Wi-Fi drivers and firmware much more widely accessible and is included with virtually all Linux distributions. I don’t use Bluetooth all that often, so the problem didn’t come until a later time. The Bluetooth problems were a complete omission from both my review of the Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro and the follow-up article about Linux.
The problem affected both Windows and Linux to varying degrees depending on the firmware version. The module either wasn’t ever recognized as a variant providing Bluetooth and I’d to reboot to load it, or it wouldn’t stay connected to any device for more than a few seconds. In conclusion, it would seem that a Broadcom Wi-Fi module isn’t the best choice for a Linux system.Īdditionally, I never got the Bluetooth stack (provided by the same module as the Wi-Fi) working on the machine. The cobbled-together installation solutions suggested on distribution wikis or forums would break on Kernel updates and often remain broken for days or weeks before Broadcom and the distribution would ship another firmware update. Adding some additional configuration steps when I wanted to test out new distributions. The proprietary Broadcom firmware is licensed in such a way that it can’t be distributed with many Linux distributions. I’ve had problems with the Broadcom drivers and firmware in Linux, and about every two months had the driver replaced by the wrong driver through Windows Update. The connectivity problems seemed to get bad when the laptop ran a little warmer than usual. I’ve previously mentioned how I hadn’t had any problems with the Wi-Fi support in my Lenovo Yoga 3 Pro (see my full laptop review.) After some more time, I started to notice deteriorating stability and dropped connections both when using it in Windows and Linux.
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