[clug] Mobile broadband for linux?

[Francis Whittle]

This thing that does this on Ubuntu is Network Manager, which is
supposedly desktop agnostic....

The package you want for KDE4 is ‘network-manager-kde’ (in Ubuntu and
Debian at least, but I think it applies to SuSE too - another possible
is ‘knetworkmanager’), so check if that's installed.  I can't think of
any reason why it wouldn't come with Kubuntu or OpenSuSE though
(certainly I'd expect it to be in Kubuntu).  The actual auto-detection
of modems part is not linked to the desktop but udev (previously HAL),
but you'll need to front-end to set things up, which still feels a bit
stupid to me.

That said I just looked at the KDE interface for network manager, and
not to put to fine a point on it, it looks horrid (overly complex and
unpolished).  You might be better off installing the Gnome front-end
(‘network-manager-gnome’, surprise, surprise) and dealing with a bit of
cross-desktop theme-related ugliness;  It shouldn't pull in any
libraries you're not already using for, say, Firefox, or GIMP, except
maybe libnotify.

Cheers,
Francis

On Wed, 2009-09-16 at 13:14 +1000, Colin Roe wrote:
> Hi List
> 
> As we're onto using mobile phones as broadband modems under Linux, I can also 
> confirm that the Samsung A411NextG phone 'just works' with Ubuntu 9.04 (and 
> reportedly also with the latest Mint too).
> 
> Plug it into the USB and immediately a New Mobile Broadband Connection screen 
> appears leading to, inter alia, preconfigured setup options for various 
> Telstra services. All you need to know is which one to select and you're on 
> the net - albeit expensively. For NextG I chose the Telstra (UMTS HSDPA) 
> option.
> 
> Frustratingly, this 'just works' solution doesn't seem to be in Kubuntu 9.04 
> or the KDE4 variants of openSuSE 11.1 or 11.2 Milestone 7. Nor did it come up 
> in a Gnome install of 11.2 Milestone 7 which I find intriguing.
> 
> Is there any simple way to install all necessary parts of the system 
> that  'just works' in Ubuntu into a KDE-based operating system?
> 
> Or am I stuck with cobbling the config data from Ubuntu 9.04's 
> System/Preferences/Network Connections/Mobile Broadband into the Network 
> Manager in KDE? So far that alone hasn't been sufficient.
> 
> Colin Roe