Enable Wi-fi on Kali Linux

May be your wireless card is in turned off state, does the laptop have any dedicated physical switch or key combo(like Fn+F3 on my acer laptop) to turn on/off Wi-Fi ? most laptops also have a LED to show Wi-Fi card state.

Device firmwares are not pre installed in kali-linux(my last used version 1.0.4 can't tell about latest versions) , so if not already installed, install them.

sudo apt-get install firmware-linux firmware-linux-free firmware-linux-nonfree

Install Broadcom wireless card firmware

sudo apt-get install firmware-brcm80211 firmware-b43-installer firmware-b43legacy-installer broadcom-sta-dkms

Then use proper kernel drivers, b43 or b43legacy, iwlwifi is Intel Wi-Fi card driver so firmware-iwlwifi is not necessary.


The following question in AskUbuntu resembles to this question and the best chosen answer suggests to perform the following steps:

Go to: System->Administrator->Additional Drivers(Hardware drivers)

Then click to Broadcom STA wireless driver and enable it.

Restart

Although, this is for Ubuntu, the best way to:

  Open System Settings --> Software & Updates.

  In the Softwares & Updates screen, head over to Additional Drivers and
  follow the instructions from there on.

I have personally never faced such an issue before and so I do not know what to do next :/


I'm running Kali Linux on a Macbook Pro. The macbook also uses the broadcom device drivers.

apt-get update
apt-get install linux-headers-$(uname -r | sed ‘s,[^-]*-[^-]*-,,’) broadcom-sta-dkms
modprobe -r b44 b43 b43legacy ssb brcmsmac
modprobe wl

You can find the instructions on how to make this work here.