Modem users' pain

[Magnus Therning]

On Mon, Dec 12, 2005 at 09:45:53PM +0100, Frank Siegert wrote:
>This is a call for easing the (K)ubuntu life of modem users.
>
>Many beginners are not on a LAN or WLAN, thus they have to set up some kind of 
>dialup connection, which is not achievable by a beginner yet (please correct 
>me, if I just did not find the right tool/way). I see the following problems 
>and possible solutions (partly for SmartLink modems, which have been what I 
>saw most):
>
>1. Many modems can use existing alsa drivers, but are only functional with 
>sl-modem-daemon. This is a multiverse package, not included on the 
>installation CD. How is somebody on (not yet working) dialup supposed to get 
>this package? Is there any way to include it on the CD?
>
>2. Even if they get the hardware part done somehow, they need good guiding on 
>the configuration. I assume, this can not be done automatically during 
>installation.(?) Modem information on the Wiki is very badly organized, e. g. 
>there are three pages about SmartLink modems.
>	https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SmartLinkModemDriverHowto
>	https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverHowto/SmartLinkModem
>	https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Smartlink
>If there are no other plans I would start reorganizing the Wiki content that 
>concerns modems.
>
>3. There are two related groups, I am not sure, which one the user should be 
>added to, and whether it should be done automatically for the first user:
>- dip: e. g. pppd is "-rwsr-xr--  1 root dip"
>- dialout: the modem device, e. g. /dev/pts/5 is "crw-rw----  1 root dialout"
>
>Any thoughts?

wvdial is your friend! Pick one of the groups and use sudo. That's how I
do it, it's quick and pain free.

The whole issue around silly modems (i.e. modems that "offload" DSP
tasks to the CPU) isn't very good. That piece of the market seems to be
geared entirely to Windows punters. If only "get a real modem!" were a
solution to the problem ;-)

/M

-- 
Magnus Therning                    (OpenPGP: 0xAB4DFBA4)
magnus at therning.org
http://therning.org/magnus

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