Also, a little bit of background--Broadcom has been notorious for not supporting Linux well. I've heard that they're starting to come around, but since I no longer use those wireless chipsets, I don't know from experience.
Don't take Broadcom experience (which is well documented) as a fail towards an entire OS when it's really a vendor issue.
No what I take as a fail of the Linux community is NOT pointing that out up front. And assuming things as you did earlier.
This article is from 2006 and is relevant...my experience was from circa 2007/8. But as I said everytime I try there’s always a gotcha. I will admit every 3 to 5 years I try linux on the desktop again and everytime there’s a huge improvement.
BTW: Broadcomm sucks in the windows community as well.