[BozemanLUG] Broadband wireless and Linux?

[David Boreham]

On 4/20/2010 8:35 AM, Scott Dowdle wrote:
> A few weeks ago I had someone call me at home asking about broadband wireless for Linux.  Turns out the person lives 3 miles north of Belgrade and neither DSL nor Bresnan cable Internet are available to them.  They have been using some satellite service that they have grown unhappy with... and was asking what if any broadband wireless services might be available.  They called the various cell phone company but found out they were all clueless about Linux compatibility.
>
> The NetworkManager website has a nice list of hardware device compatibility but it sure would be nice to find someone locally who has some experience with broadband wireless and Linux who can report their experience.  Anyone?
>
>    

My "solution" to this problem was to build my own Wireless ISP, but I 
wouldn't necessarily recommend that route ;)

I'm sure Little Apple would be happy to tell him if they can get service 
to his place.

As far as WWAN service direct to a Linux machine goes, I can report that 
it works just fine with recent Fedoras.
I have a Verizon CDMA/EVDO card in a Fedora laptop and it works without 
any trouble. The radio/modem looks like a USB serial card to the OS and 
I believe the necessary kernel drivers have existed for a long time. 
Recent Fedoras (and probably other distributions too) have added the 
userspace config UI, dialer functionality. Around here Verizon is pretty 
much the only viable option for cell data service.