Hi. I just got my dial-up connection sorted out with wvdial (but not without a fair bit of misunderstanding) on Ubuntu 7.04, and I'd like to know what people recommend as a good GUI front-end to wvdial (or a stand-alone, whatever) for a dial-up modem. I've been thinking about Gnome PPP, but I'm not sure how to install it properly. Any suggestions?

P.S. - Yes, this is my first post. I'm so happy I finally got a connection to work after getting my hands on Ubuntu. W00T!

I used a dial up connection for 3 or 4 years. I started out with wvdial and it worked great. Later in a new install the installer gave me a GUI dialer called kppp. I used kppp for a while. On a subsequent install I went back to wvdial and used it for the remainder of my dialup era. Wvdial is much easier to use and configure than kppp. I have vague memories of trying to get around some of my disatisfactions with kppp by using the Gnome equivalent GUI (gnome-ppp I think) and finding the Gnome version even less handy than kppp.

Now that you have worked through the complexities of wvdial here is what I think that you will encounter on kppp. kppp will be much easier to configure because it only allows you to configure the settings that it absolutely must ask of you. Anything else it makes generally good assumptions and does not annoy you with unnecessary choices. But if you ever have to make a setting different than the kppp default assumptions then you will have to wander through all of the pppd files in /etc to find the proper config setting and change it.

With wvdial you have to at least review all of the pppd settings but they are all available in one spot in /etc/wvdial.conf and man wvdial gives you at least a rudimentary explanation of what the parameters mean. So for anything beyond plug and pray computing I highly recommend wvdial over kppp or gnome-ppp, especially since you have already mastered wvdial.

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Steve Stites

Thanks for the advice, guys. Yes, I have heard about wvdial being more flexible than most dialers. What I'm really looking for is just a dialer that can run in the background and not tie up the terminal too much. I think I'll try Gnome-PPP, and if that doesn't work out, I'll look up how to make wvdial run in the background. Thanks for the link, Zoranp!

EDIT: Wait, I typed the command just as the link said, but it came back with the message "could not find package gnome-ppp". What now?

Are you sure that before issuing the apt-get you actually added additional repositories?

Prerequisites: add universe and multiverse repositories
http://www.ubuntux.org/node/71

Here's what I did: I followed the link's instructions and edited the file "/etc/apt/sources.list". I uncommented these two lines:

deb http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse
deb-src http://ca.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ feisty-backports main restricted universe multiverse


Then, I connected to the internet with wvdial. Since this hangs up the terminal, I opened another one and typed "sudo apt-get install gnome-ppp" It still said "could not find package". What am I missing?

EDIT: Sorry! I just found out that Gnome-PPP isn't supported by my i386 box for some reason. Sorry to waste your time. Now, are there any OTHER dialers that will be supported by an i386?