Reason for Making the Project
From Usb-adsl-modem-manager
A History of Me, Ubuntu, USB ADSL Modems and my relatives
Working in the computer industry means that all your friends and family (and their friends too) want you to fix / make / give them a computer. And because I like to update my computer(s) a lot, I have lots of spare bits.
Which means, after many years I have ended supporting quite a lot of PC's. As anyone who has done a job (however small) to fix a friend/relatives PC, once you have touched it, you bound into an unwritten agreement of life long support.
This wasn't so bad in the Early years, but more and more often these pesky people keep buying Broadband from their computers, which means I have to go set them up.
Now since about 2003 every ISP gave you a nice shiny USB modem (in the UK it was nearly always a Thomson Speedtouch 330 - in many different shapes and colours). As users got used to having Broadband they decided they all wanted wireless (or more PC's on the same connection) this left about 500,000 USB modems sat in bottom drawers, also when people switch ISP's they nearly always get another Pesky USB modem.
So overall, lots of USB modems are sat about doing nothing (I have 4).
And during these years the old Pentium 2-3-4 PC that I first setup for Aunties, Uncles, Friends, Uncles Friends, Uncles Friends Brother etc all are getting a bit clunky.
Now back to me : about 1 year ago I discovered Linux, I was lucky, I work with Unix at work so I understand quite a bit, I was further lucky because my mentor (David Harrigan) was with Linux from the early days. My First computer to switch was my Work Desktop, them My own Desktop, then both my other 2 Desktops, then my Dads 2 Business PC's.
I began to realise that Ubuntu and Linux was the future, and the old crusty PC's running windows 98 would again Fly like the wind, when I converted them over.
So I was at my aunty's house (at a party) and as usual I was lead to the original P3 450mhz 384MB ram Computer (windows ME - i'm so sorry) that I gave her about 6 years ago.
It was barely useable, and worse still she whipped out a USB modem and a letter with some ISP credentials on it, my auntie (in-law) was ready for broadband - but her PC wasn't.
So I decide : here we go My first Ubuntu PC for a relative - hopefully less support.....
So after discovering it wasn't good enough for Ubuntu, I wasn't put off - out came XUbuntu, my first try at it. It was fast, surprisingly nippy. Next, make that modem work... I plugged it in at home (connected to my line) and.. Nothing.... oh So I search about and find.....
http://www.linux-usb.org/SpeedTouch/ubuntu/index.html
This was my inspiration to this project, basically after doing the setup manually I thought.. I'm a programmer, surely I can make a GUI for all that...
And, well I can, and I have.
