On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 17:26, Mark S. Townsley <[email protected]> wrote: > Hi > > I am looking into 3G or 4G support in Linux. > There are some netbooks with 3G/4G built in. There are also USB dongle > solution. What I am unsure is whether any of them are compatible with a > Linux distro. > Does anyone have experience to share?
i've used a variety of verizon 3g dongles (i don't think there was 4g at the time) with ubuntu with great success. when i started doing so about 2 years ago i had to google the manual setup for pppd (which found me a great step-by-step blog post with comments on updates/tweaks that were invaluable), but starting with (i think) ubuntu 9.4 the thing was just recognized by ubuntu/network manager without any difficulty. in my experience, verizon's dongles were good about not changing chipsets without changing model #, so you can probably just google the model # and linux to be certain before buying. i'd be willing to bet that unless you are using a really cut-rate provider like cricket, you could even bring your laptop into a store and play with a dongle before buying to be extra-extra sure. why get a dongle when you can just tether your phone, though? at least with android, if you root your phone, you can get mobile hotspot service (for you and/or others) even without plugging your phone into your laptop, and you can get it for free. (sprint charges $40/mo for use of the app, but once rooted, there's a free app to do the same thing) i can't think of a time i wanted to use my laptop when i didn't also have my phone with me. i have started carrying the phone's usb cable along though since mobile hotspot sucks up the juice in the phone pretty fast, though... it occurs to me that you could probably get a free android phone from someone who is upgrading and get just a data plan and make it your wwan device, if you are trapped in an iphone contract or something. i have a friend who does that and takes it one step further with voip and has his phone off the voice network entirely, despite having a phone number and receiving voice calls in what feels (as a caller) normal ways. usb dongles have worked awesomely in my experience with linux the past couple years, from wifi to wwan. (my roommate on the other hand has had terrible luck with his herd of usb wifi adaptors + ubuntu...so check the reviews on newegg or somewhere to see if others are successfully using with linux before buying). some of the netbooks with builtins may not work so well, but then, you can google the netbook model and linux to see results pretty instantly for those, since they use the same parts in every model.. luck++; _______________________________________________ PLUG mailing list [email protected] http://lists.pdxlinux.org/mailman/listinfo/plug
