Modem users' pain

[Magnus Therning]

On Tue, Dec 13, 2005 at 01:54:06PM +0100, Frank Siegert wrote:
>12. December 2005 22:50, Magnus Therning:
>| wvdial is your friend! Pick one of the groups and use sudo. That's how I
>| do it, it's quick and pain free.
>
>If you take into consideration any of the other points, i.e.
>sl-modem-daemon not available on the install-CD and no easy-to-follow
>documentation on setting up the winmodems, this is not that pain free.
>This statement also is contrary to all of my experiences. And you
>should not have to use sudo for starting an internet connection.

Yes, sl-modem is a pain. I don't think anyone can argue against that.

I remember having to use pppd and writing chat scripts, now that was a
real pain. Since I was forced back on a modem less than a year ago I've
thought it was pretty painless (once the device was there):

 % sudo wvdialconf /etc/wvdial.conf
 % sudo vim /etc/wvdial.conf <enter user name and password)
 % sudo wvdial

Now, I can't claim that I have a lot of experience with setting up
modems...

>| 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 ;-)
>
>Well, this is the kind of answer I would expect on a Debian mailing
>list ;-) (no offense!)

Yes, that was the reason for the smiley ;-)

>But it does not help us a lot in bringing this nice distribution to
>beginners, which, in contrast to Debian (?), is one aim of Ubuntu, is
>it not? Apart from beginners, I am also using a laptop with a built-in
>winmodem, which I don't mind using when somewhere without network
>connection.

I don't believe we will be able to make it simple and pain free to get
dialup connectivity as long as we have to deal with devices that require
non-free kernel drivers. So, if we really want to change the modem
experience in Linux on a broad scale we need to get more drivers freely
available under licenses that allow re-distribution. Until that happens
all we can do is polish the tools that will help the lucky few to dialup
connectivity.

/M

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

Software is not manufactured, it is something you write and publish.
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by patent law on written works.

You are in a twisty little maze of standards, all conflicting.
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