2 Dec 2010 robertc   » (Master)

justworks-hardware-vendors

Ok, so micro rant time: this is the effect of not taking things upstream: hardware doesn’t work Out Of The Box.

Very briefly, I purchased a Vodafone prepaid mobile broadband package today, which comes with a modem and SIM. The modem is a K3571-Z, and Ubuntu *thinks* it knows how they work (it doesn’t). So it fails to connect in NetworkManager with a rather opaque ‘NO CARRIER’ message.

Thanks to excellent assistance from Matt Trudel, we tracked this down to a theory that perhaps modemmanager is using the wrong serial port – and voila, it is. From there, the config file (/lib/udev/rules.d/77-mm-zte-port-types.rules) was an obvious next step – and indeed there is no entry in there for the 19d2:1010 – the K3571-Z. Google found one immediately though, on a Vodafone research site.

The awful shame is this: that was committed to the bcm project in March this year. If Vodafone had shipped off a patch to modemmanager, we could have had that in 10.10, and possibly even in 10.04. There are plenty of users having trouble on Whirlpool etc with this model who would have had a better experience – helping Vodafone’s users be happier.

All it would have taken is an email :(

I’m sure Vodafone want a great experience for their users, but I think they’re failing to separate out platform improvements – share and share alike, and branding / custom facilities. The net impact is harmful, not helpful.

Anyhow, Natty will support this modem.


Syndicated 2010-12-02 05:48:27 from Code happens

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