Wednesday, November 19, 2008

HUAWEI E170/E220 MODEM and LINUX

Congratulations! If you are reading this you must already have a wireless connection to the internet via a USB modem called HUAWEI E170 or E220. And you want to experiment with linux but it s kinda complicated, right? You have to download drivers, or make some "adjustments" to the operating system, but it looks a little bit difficult. The answer to your problem is Fedora 9 live cd! All you have to do is download this distro (free) in .iso format, and burn it to a cd. While you have Windows on and the modem connected (having already typed the pin if necessary) reboot your pc with the cd inside. Select "boot from cd" from the BIOS and wait until Fedora loads (it takes a while..). Having pressed "enter" a couple of times you will be seeing (in a while) fedora's workspace. Up and on the right of the screen, you will be seeing an icon that resembles an antenna. Click on it and select "auto GSM network". Start the Mozilla Firefox and after an initial (small) delay you will be connected! And the nice thing is that you will notice a quicker surfing and downloading speed than Windows.
Have fun, viva la linux!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You can actually upgrade your E220 USB 3G modem to 7.2 Mbps. I have done it already. No money involved, just get the latest firmware and your 3G modem runs at 7.2 Mbps :)...Vodacom is not posting a link to the firmware but it is here in my post >>

http://ninjarabbits.blogspot.com/2009/04/upgrade-your-3g-modem.html