If you’ve been following me on Twitter, you already know I got a mobile broadband connection. If not, that’s a solid reason to follow me on Twitter. Anyway! The modem I got is a Huawei E220, and I’m stoked to say it works flawlessly on GNU/Linux. I meant to write a blog post about it earlier, but I’ve been tied up with some projects alongside our local KDE dev, Siraj 🙂 (nothing KDE-related, though).

A few days ago, I came across a blog where the owner wrote about switching to GNU/Linux. One of his worries was getting his Huawei E220 to work on Linux. Sure, it’s a breeze, but I’d hate for a new Linux user to ditch it over a little hiccup with their 3G modem 😛 I left a comment on his blog, and by the time I was done, I’d basically written a full post on how to set it up. So, I figured I’d polish it up and share it here to help anyone else struggling with 3G on Linux. Here’s my mini tutorial – tweaked a bit to fit nicely.

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The E220 works perfectly with wvdial on Ubuntu Hardy Heron.
Here’s how to do it…
(1) Plug in the modem and run
sudo wvdialconf
(2) Then edit the wvdial.conf file…
sudo vim /etc/wvdial.conf Uncomment the Username and Password lines in wvdial.conf and add this to the end: “stupid mode = yes”
(3) Save the wvdial.conf file
(4) Run wvdial to connect 🙂

If you’re on Ubuntu 8.10, the Graphical Network Manager picks up the modem and hooks you up in seconds.

I usually use kppp on my Slackware setup, and it works great too. I like kppp better than wvdial since it even tracks the modem’s data usage.

~SeeJay