I've got the BCM57780, I ended up going with LXDE 11 because the wireless drivers were not available by default. If I had a hard ethernet connection available it would be no real problem as the debian solution to install the drivers is not that hard about steps 5 steps or so but without it its just hard.
I was playing with Mepis-Antix and they have got around the issue by using ceni
http://antix.mepis.org/index.php?title=Howto_articles#Ceni which allows you to hook up wireless without the drivers.
Fedora doesn't have the drivers by default but then you don't need an ethernet connection to your laptop either. I had a pendrive copy of fedora linux, I copied the 3 broadcom rpms and once my install was complete one command rpm -ivh *rpm installed all the drivers and I was up and running, its just that Fedora as a distro lacks stability being the testing ground that it is.