Why is it so difficult to get dialup to work in Linux? It has been this way for many years, too. I tried a different distro in 1996 when dialup modems were still the main means of Internet access for most home users, and it was painfully difficult then, as well.
Since KDE 4 is such a hog I decided to try to get Gnome-ppp working and avoid having to load the 70+ megabytes of otherwise unneeded libraries just for KPPP. Aside from the various files you have to track down and change permissions for, BOTH wvdial and Gnome-ppp are ridiculously buggy. It is necessary to disable carrier detect to prevent instant loss of a connection. In both of them. Yes, the only way to stay online with Gnome-ppp and wvdial is to NOT watch carrier status. So why is this function even there if it is useless? Or
why hasn't it been FIXED if it is needed? Is Gnome-ppp still being maintained? Also, Gnome-ppp doesn't understand more than one dialer entry in the wvdial.conf file. It uses the last one regardless of how many there are. And it won't keep many other settings, such as dock in the notification area. You have to remember to reset this every time you run it.
Further, either the pppd is buggy or the kernel is. Again, you cannot stay online with the ppd as configured. You have to disable all forms of compression or your connection will mysteriously stop working after only a few minutes. I remember this problem from my 1996 experiment with Linux. It has something to do with loss of "sync" between the remote and the local systems. As I recall, the help page I found on it said it was a KERNEL driver problem. Sixteen years later, this problem has still not been fixed!? And if it has been around this long, why would any distro still be
shipping its pppd configured in a way guaranteed not to work? Is it so hard to edit some text files so the system will work as installed?
But even being able to dial out and connect is not the end of the troubles. Somehow the port is not released when Gnome-ppp/wvdial exits and I get "permission denied" when I try to use the modem again after disconnecting. It is necessary to run a script to RESTART the sl-modem-daemon to use the modem again. This is ridiculous. It's like being sent back to the days of MS-DOS where you have to kill and reload things to make them work.
Does anyone working on Linux care about dialup? Some people do still have uses for it, and some even depend on it.