I tried a slew of distros - some recognize the modem, but nothing more, most don’t even see/interact with it. It took hours of combing through outdated forums, mailing lists, wiki, etc to find commands that would not only see the modem, but unlock it and connect successfully. This was found on the Debian unstable wiki, and the system would install but fail to boot on stable, so I have no idea if the instructions work for Debian. Kubuntu however, boots successfully on that machine (a ThinkPad) and the modem “works” (is seen) ootb and can be unlocked + used successfully with the rest of the commands in that wiki page.
The fact that I tried nearly a dozen distros, and I tinkerer with it for a literal month, I’m not touching shit. I didn’t want to go Ubuntu for this machine, but cell connectivity (and hotspot hosting) is a 100% requirement, so I’m using what works.
I’m a moderate nix user but fuck packaging my own drivers and figuring out what software packages are needed to enable the modem. 20 years ago, sure. Now, fuck no, it should “just work”. PTSD from wifi not working, requiring windows drivers in a wrapper, etc. I’m not diving into that again, nope nope nope.
I tried a slew of distros - some recognize the modem, but nothing more, most don’t even see/interact with it. It took hours of combing through outdated forums, mailing lists, wiki, etc to find commands that would not only see the modem, but unlock it and connect successfully. This was found on the Debian unstable wiki, and the system would install but fail to boot on stable, so I have no idea if the instructions work for Debian. Kubuntu however, boots successfully on that machine (a ThinkPad) and the modem “works” (is seen) ootb and can be unlocked + used successfully with the rest of the commands in that wiki page.
The fact that I tried nearly a dozen distros, and I tinkerer with it for a literal month, I’m not touching shit. I didn’t want to go Ubuntu for this machine, but cell connectivity (and hotspot hosting) is a 100% requirement, so I’m using what works.
I’m a moderate nix user but fuck packaging my own drivers and figuring out what software packages are needed to enable the modem. 20 years ago, sure. Now, fuck no, it should “just work”. PTSD from wifi not working, requiring windows drivers in a wrapper, etc. I’m not diving into that again, nope nope nope.