Modem users' pain

[Frank Siegert]

Matthew Garrett and Peter Garrett -- now I really have to concentrate who I am 
answering right now ;-)

13. December 2005 07:53, Peter Garrett:
| [many remarks I agree with]
| ...
| Something similar to KDE's kppp is desperately needed in a default Ubuntu
| install - in fact something even simpler would be better. The existing
| graphical tool in the network setup has deep problems in my view.  My
| experience, and that of others, has been that when it "works", and
| connects, it produces *very* slow connections (I am not a developer so I
| have no idea why).
|
| People also do not expect to have to use a password to dial up. This has
| been fixed for years in kppp, and even pppconfig works fine, with the
| user in the dialup and dip groups.
|
| Surely someone with more expertise than I possess could write a simple
| wizard to set up dialup? (I discovered that pppconfig is capable of
| using xdialog, zenity and friends - but the GUIs are horrible)

Since I am using KDE myself, I know that kppp, although nice, is not the 
answer alone ... Beginner: "Ah... the modem is not found, I guess that is 
because I am not member of a group that has permissions to access the 
device." -- yeah right. Let alone the winmodem driver setup.

| I feel a *prominent* and *simple* solution should be presented to new
| users - i.e. human beings. A decent GUI front end to pppconfig would be an
| idea. If I knew how to program I would do one myself, but as I don't,
| I'm appealing to the experts on this list.

I agree, and this should be part of the installation procedure, as well as 
being accessible by a GUI frontend in Ubuntu ("network setup" and "modem 
lights" panel app?) and Kubuntu (kppp?) later. Who would be responsible for 
that and how can I help him/her?