Ubuntu made me happy the other day. We’re talking the previous one here, 9.04. I didn’t dare upgrade yet :) What happened? I’ve been trying to get internet at my place, and ordered an ADSL line. For the time being, they graciously offered me a 3G-usb stick to get connected. Well, somehow Tango Luxembourg is having heaps and bounds of problems “flipping the switch” (the previous owner used Tango, and he thought it would be a matter of “only flipping a switch”. Well, perhaps, but they keep running into problems), so I told them to stuff it. I’ll just keep on using my 3G thingy. Works well, for now. Plus, it saves a bit on having to pay for a phone line :)
Anyway, the Huawei USB E1750 modem (can’t find an official product page :) is made to plug-and-play under Windows, and, admittedly, there it works well. I dreaded Unix, and had been avoiding it for the last weeks. That position was fast becoming untenable, especially if I avoided ADSL altogether. So, time to get it working under Ubuntu!
Was that hard? Well, google a bit and you’ll find solutions. The thing is: if you plug in the USB modem, it gets treated like a USB stick. The “mode” with which your pc accesses the Huawei needs to be switched to “modem”. There are some solutions out there, simplest way seemed to use this shell script. So I did. Then, Ubuntu found my USB modem, went into a wizard to set it up. The wizard asked “where are you?” (Luxembourg) and “which provider in Luxembourg” (Tango). That was it.
BAM BABY!! Modem working! Enter one pincode, and I am online in Ubuntu!!
I had prepared all this info: phone number, data packet size, whatever. Not necessary, Ubuntu is as pluggy and play-ey as Windows (okay okay, download one script and then it is). Awesome! Hats off, well done!
So that part is working out, next up: getting my new printer to work. Hope it’ll be equally easy :)
Update: The printer was plug-and-almost-play under Ubuntu. It’s a Samsung ML-2240 laser printer, and Ubuntu can’t handle it. Upon plugging it in, it (eventually) proposes to install a printer, make: samsung (ok), then model: ML-2250. There are several drivers for the ML2250, the recommended one does not work. I didn’t try all, but the Foomatic/gdi one does work (found that by googling). Prints high on the page, which is annoying, but plug-and-play ease is preserved. (That’s important, because I’ll be reinstalling my laptop soonish, I think).