Estou tendo um problema parecido, estava funcionando perfeito o meu wireless (instalei os pacotes b43 (fwcutter e o driver), do nada deu kernel panic, reiniciei e a conexão wireless sumiu do gerenciador de network do nautilus... Estou usando o Ubuntu 11.10. Fiz alguns testes, lá vai:
#lshw -C network
*-network:1
description: Network controller
product: BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller
vendor: Broadcom Corporation
physical id: 4
bus info: pci@0000:09:04.0
version: 02
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master
configuration: driver=b43-pci-bridge latency=64
resources: irq:22 memory:c0102000-c0103fff
#lspci
09:04.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
#ifconfig
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:1b:24:54:6e:c8
inet addr:192.168.0.178 Bcast:192.168.0.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::21b:24ff:fe54:6ec8/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:5954 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:5022 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:6449563 (6.4 MB) TX bytes:615089 (615.0 KB)
Interrupt:9 Base address:0xa000
lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:16 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1296 (1.2 KB) TX bytes:1296 (1.2 KB)
Alguém pode me ajudar? instalei o wicd e não encontrou rede wireless, só a cabeada... desinstalei os pacotes b43, e instalei de novo, mas nada....