Modem Manager GUI: Linux Mobile Partner Application For USB Modems

By
Enock Seth Nyamador

Modem Manager GUI is frontend for ModemManager daemon able to control specific modem functions.

For users of USB modems/dongles there is no official or native Linux Mobile Partner application for them, especially those manufactured by Huawei, ZTE and others. I see this as development/software bias towards Linux distro users.

As a user of one of this modems myself I find difficult previously sending USSD codes, seeing device info, contacts, statistics and others as users on these modems on other operating systems does, especially Windows. Then I came across Modem Manager GUI and know you will find it useful too.

modem-manager-about
Main features:

  • GTK3 interface
  • Send and receive SMS messages with messages concatenation

modem-manager-sms

modem-manager-notification

  • Send USSD request and receive answer in system encoding

modem-manager-ussd

  • Get modem and SIM information (Device info, Operator name, Mode, IMEI, IMSI/ESN, Signal level)

modem-manager-info2

  • Scan available mobile networks
  • Control data transmission process and set session traffic and time limits

Installation

It’s good to see Modem Manager GUI in the official repositories of most and popular Linux distros.

Fedora:

yum install modem-manager-gui

Ubuntu, Debian, Linux Mint:

sudo apt-get install modem-manager-gui

Via Ubuntu (PPA):

 sudo add-apt-repository ppa:linuxonly/modem+manager+gui
 sudo apt-get update
 sudo apt-get install modem-manager-gui

Arch Linux / Manjaro Linux:

sudo pacman -S modem-manager-gui

Enjoy.