There are a lot of Linksys wireless cards based on the Broadcom chip out there. In most cases, the user has no connection to the internet to retrieve anything the fw-cutter or firmware needed. However, most of these users have either an existing linux OS installed, or a Windows OS where presumably the firmware is already present.

Can I suggest a workaround for the live-cd '/etc/init.d/knoppix-autoconfig' script to search all drives found (hd, usb, etc) for a directory named /lib/firmware or the Windows system files for the microcode bcmxxx.sys and bcmxxx.inf files, or already extracted .fw files. If they exist, it means there is a prior installation of some linux OS and the user has already gone through the acquisition/set-up of the microcode, thereby avoiding any licensing troubles for the knoppix live-cd

The code would be as follows :

1-) Check if the bcm43xx driver was discovered by 'hwsetup' in the /etc/sysconfig/netcard text file
2-) If found, for each existing drive :
- see if any /lib/firmware/bcm43xx*.fw files exist.
If so, copy them to the knoppix /lib/firmware directory
- see if a windows disk subdirectory contains bcm*.sys and bcm*.inf.
If so, call fw-futter on them to store them in the knoppix /lib/firmware directory
3-) remove and reload the bcm43xx module, and restart the card

Hope this helps make knoppix easier for wireless users