ubuntu-devel Digest, Vol 16, Issue 37

[Dean Loros]

I would vote for Gnome PPP being included in a basic install--I found it 
almost by accident & it works better (for me) than any of the other 
answers for dialup. I am a slightly advanced user & am forced to use 
dialup due to living 20 miles away from a "urban" hub.

My two cents worth--
Dean

>Peter Garrett:
>| Dmitriy Kropivnitskiy <nigde at mitechki.net> wrote:
>| > I haven't tried this myself (don't have a modem or a dial-up account),
>| > but when you open System\Administration\Networking, you get a chance to
>| > configure "Modem connection" and it looks pretty strainght forward. It
>| > asks you for a phone number, username and password and gives you a few
>| > reasonable options. I wonder if it works as well as it looks.
>|
>| No.
>| ...
>| I still think dialup users need a better interface for configuring their
>| connections - and I personally think that a nice gtk2 wizardish front end
>| for pppconfig would be a good start. I had a look at zenity yesterday
>| thinking I might be able to cobble together a non-functional purely
>| cosmetic "this is what I mean" set of boxes, but apparently either zenity
>| lacks what I need, or I was unable to find documentation that told me
>| enough.
>|
>| Xdialog may be ugly, but the docs are excellent - if I have time I
>| will attempt to at least put some screenshots together, to show what I
>| think might be easier and better...
>|
>| Would this help at all ?
>
>It would only be one step of a few. To be honest, I don't consider the 
>post-installation-part, i. e. managing the ISP connection, to be the most 
>difficult one:
>Kubuntu (kppp): Is already in good shape for what is needed. But does it also 
>use /etc/ppp/peers/ setup or only its own?
>Ubuntu (System/Administration/Networking): Needs fixes of the reported 
>slowness, if reproducable. Needs connection-by-user, instead of sudo? Needs 
>tray icon functionality. But this should be done upstream IMHO. Have you 
>followed up on any of these yet?
>
>More difficult seems to be the installation part, where these tasks have to be 
>solved:
>- modem has to be recognized or asked for
>- the corresponding, probably even non-free, module needs to be installed 
>where possible
>- possibly a needed daemon has to be installed
>- the admin-user has to be put into the dialout/dip groups
>- one ISP can be configured, which should of course also appear in kppp and 
>System/Administration/Networking later
>  
>