2009 and still in fear of using new hardware in GNU/Linux!

[ Thanks to steve hill for this link. ]

"So, I went to a Three shop, 10km away. I approached the shop assistant. "Does your dongle support GNU/Linux?" The answer: "Ah mate, I don’t know, officially it's Windows and Mac... I know of a guy who tried but it didn't work". It turns out that the dongle I tried at the Telstra shop was the "old version" offered by Three. Only the new ones were available. I took a deep breath, and bought one. The shop attendant activated it for me.

"It was recognised, but it didn't work -- it didn't connect. After a search online, and a lot of stress, I discovered that the APN needed to be changed into "3services" rather than "3netaccess". I did exactly that. It worked. I was online immediately after activation. In fact, right now I am connected using that very dongle. The causes

"My small odyssey could have been a whole lot worse. I could have discovered that the new Three dongle wasn't actually supported. The fix to the problem could have been harder and required black magic, rather than a configuration change from the GUI. The question really is: why did it happen? Why is a GNU/Linux user still treated as a second class citizen in the end-user IT industry?"

Complete Story

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