Including usb-modeswitch in default installation?

[Timo Jyrinki]

2010/2/9 Timo Jyrinki <timo.jyrinki at gmail.com>:
> If I read those correctly, they work neither with or without
> usb-modeswitch, hence adding it would not decrease any usability?

I poked around on IRC and summarized with my non-existent journalistic
skills the situation in my blog:
http://losca.blogspot.com/2010/02/ubuntu-1004-and-3g-modems-usb.html

I think the main interesting thing would be that what are the
usb-modeswitch developers' motivations and could they with some help
from the kernel guys be directed to contribute more to the kernel. Or
possibly a new group of people (or one person) who work between
usb-modeswitch and kernel people. And of course there is also the
question if solving the problem in userspace is actually a wise thing,
something that's debatable.

On a larger scale, I think it could be worth pondering what Ubuntu
could do in situations like this. I think this is one case where the
users understandably would accept any non-optimal technical solution
if it just seemingly works for them. But if we start having separate,
constantly SRU:d packages for 3G modem support, DKMS modules for eg.
DVB and video cam devices etc., is it something of a mess that Ubuntu
(or Canonical offering official support) doesn't want to wander to? On
the other hand, anything in the backport modules etc. doesn't reach
the average user other than via possible friends/forum visits.

In other words, self-updating hardware support is something that would
be nice for LTS at some point, since the only reason I sometimes
recommend non-LTS to random users is that it's more probable the newer
non-LTS version supports newer hardware.

-Timo