In the store today, I wanted to check that the Huawei E3331 3G USB dongle I was about to buy would work with my Ubuntu Linux laptops. Because I couldn’t find any posts confirming this, I’m writing this one.

Summary: I can confirm that the Huawei E3331 3G USB dongle works, completely out of the box and without any problems, on Ubuntu 14.04.

After inserting the card into a USB slot, I was greeted by this notification:

As per the instructions, I could immediately open the HiLink Web UI at http://192.168.1.1 with my browser, where, after configuring my APN like this:

The home screen showed that I was successfully connected to the 3G network:

No drivers were required. Linux (in my case Ubuntu 14.04 on x86_64) is able to connect to the device using its built-in LAN-over-USB support. This is what the relevant part of the system log looks like when the device is inserted:

[378719.431633] usb 3-3: new high-speed USB device number 73 using xhci_hcd
[378719.450078] usb 3-3: New USB device found, idVendor=12d1, idProduct=14db
[378719.450085] usb 3-3: New USB device strings: Mfr=2, Product=1, SerialNumber=0
[378719.450089] usb 3-3: Product: HUAWEI Mobile
[378719.450092] usb 3-3: Manufacturer: HUAWEI
[378719.461252] cdc_ether 3-3:1.0 eth1: register 'cdc_ether' at usb-0000:00:14.0-3, CDC Ethernet Device, 58:2c:80:13:92:63

Here you have the prerequisite speedtest:

3563342453.png

(This dongle is a connectivity backup. It’s an added bonus that the upstream is 3x that of my ADSL at home.)