If you are an Ubuntero and use dial-up to connect to the internet or use a cellphone as a modem, you may have noticed that the “intelligent dialer” utility wvdial is no longer included on the Ubuntu live CD. This has been the case since 9.04 (Jaunty) and is still true with Karmic (9.10) – and I’ve been told it won’t be on the 10.04 (Lucid) CD either!
Well, us wvdial-using Ubunteros need to stick together! It can be very difficult to configure ppp; in comparison wvdial is a cake-walk. Lots of dial-up users like to use Gnome-PPP to manage their internet connection, but the absence of wvdial just makes it hellish to get hold of any such tools. We need wvdial! Right?
Well there is something we can do about it. There is a bug report on Launchpad which asks the developers to include wvdial in future versions of Ubuntu. I am asking everyone to create an account on Launchpad then go add their name to that bug report – ie click on this link and add a comment echoing the request for wvdial. I’m not sure, but I think the developers must have decided that dial-up doesn’t exist anymore… or that dial-up users don’t matter. We need to tell them they’re wrong. Really I can’t see any good reason for excluding wvdial: it’s a pretty small binary, so I don’t think the devs needed the disk space for something else! And the fact it’s such a small program means there is no reason not to put it back in. The devs just need to be told there is a demand for it. That’s where you come in.
Please please add your name to the Launchpad bug report. Even if you don’t use wvdial yourself, please help the rest of us. A lot of us can connect to the internet only by using dial-up; I’ve seen posts on Ubuntuforums.org where users have said they will actually have to switch to another Linux distro if this isn’t put right! So please… tell the Ubuntu developers to give us wvdial!!
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Posted by Martin X 
I HATE HATE!!! 