You can use the 3 dongle in Linux,I’m using it on my Ubuntu. But Linux is not supported by Huawei, the hardware maker. It’s the lack of drivers from hardware manufactuers tha tis holding Linux back.

It’s a chicken and egg problem. Most hardware vendors develop drivers for Windows because that is the most popular platform, the one (in their view) most likely to garner them financial success. They’re also often in fierce competition with some competitor, and corporate espionage is not uncommon, so they may be inclined to take a dim view of openness in general and Open Source Software in particular. Add that all up and you get historically sub-par driver support in Linux, which means that companies like Dell and Asus have less of an incentive to build product lines around Linux. No product lines, no market share. Back to square one.

If Linux crests 5% total market share you may see an interesting tipping point. I’m interested to see Dell’s next move.

“They’re also often in fierce competition with some competitor, and corporate espionage is not uncommon, so they may be inclined to take a dim view of openness in general and Open Source Software in particular.”

Any competitor worth their weight in gold has already decompiled the drivers and hardware. This happens all of the time, ever heard of “clean room” reverse engineering?

The main reason is to bring products to market faster it’s cheaper to purchase some closed source code “off the shelf” instead of building your own implementation so the code can’t be released due to license restrictions.

Well Sky are no worse than Channel 4 in that respect, or even the BBCs first version of the iPlayer, which used MS DRM rather than streaming Flash content.

Turn the problem on it’s head - the problem is that the broadcasters (Sky, BBC, C4, etc) need to satisfy the content producers that their on-line solutions have some sort of DRM.

And there is no open DRM solution. The nature of Linux would make it a mockery anyway (given the ease with which you could customise the O/S to record video output).

I’ll also confirm the 3G cards work - it’s a bit like ISPs who insist they don’t support connection via wireless routers. There’s a difference between unsupported and something not working.

Woohoo! Got a pink Asus 701 4GB on Saturday (thanks eBuyer) and just got my 3 dongle working on it. I’m mobile lol

Thanks for your replies.

NB I did know about other Linux problems like C4, maybe I should ahve stated ‘come across just two examples in last few days’ Sorry.