I get a notice saying checking for updates is disabled while connected with cellular data.
Fair enough, except I’m paying for unlimited data so I selected settings to change that setting. There doesn’t seem to be a setting for telling the phone I want no restrictions on network traffic while using cellular data.
Is there one? How do I find it?
If your telecommunications operator still unknown (automatically, based on inserted SIM card) to your Linux phone you might want to try following: How will APN settings work? (just note that data roaming rules might play some role as well, but probably irrelevant here). At first, please check which version you already have installed there: apt list mobile-broadband-provider-info -a.
I’m using one of those AweSIM cards. You would think that would be configured correctly.
I took a look at that APN settings thread you mentioned. I am at least getting internet on my phone with the hard cutoff for WiFi engaged.
Depending on how often I see this and how annoyed I get with it I may the results of the command line you posted.
What worked for me:
I used “Advanced Network Configuration”: in “Mobile Broadband” I edited the currently used entry and changed “Metered connection” to No in General tab.
“Advanced Network Configuration” is part of network-manager-gnome package which could be installed with:
sudo apt install network-manager-gnome
You way want to use “Mobile Settings” to tell the Compositor to scale down “Advanced Network Configuration” so it fits on the screen
I don’t think it is possible to tell from the APN or the SIM whether it is on an “unlimited*” plan or not. You might in the future even change what plan you are on.
I guess you could say … if you buy a Librem 5 and an AweSIM card on an appropriate plan together, you could expect Purism to configure the phone in the requested way but that has a serious shortcoming: if you ever want to reflash your device (start from scratch) then you won’t know what Purism did to configure it in that way. So there is some merit in knowing how to do it yourself.
If you like command lines, maybe:
nmcli conn show
(would expect one line for the WiFi connection and one line for the cellular connection, both potentially active, plus lines for any historical connections that you have used)
then pick the correct UUID
nmcli conn show UUID | grep connection.metered
will probably be “unknown”, in which case Linux tries to guess (!!) whether the connection is metered or not, but you can override its guessing by setting “yes” or “no” (you want “no” in this case).
nmcli conn modify UUID connection.metered no
Well, these are valid concerns certainly. However, I was expecting what you see on other cell phones which is an option to say the connection is unmetered. There is no such setting for the cell connection, just the WiFi connection.
I would expect it would be my problem if I said cellular was unmetered and it really wasn’t, but I don’t get that option. Purism is either protecting me from myself or missed the item I’m looking for in the GUI they provide.
I have yet to try the suggestion from stak to install an alternate settings GUI. Won’t have a chance until I return home in a week.
That worked for me.
This got me as well. This probably should be a toggle you can easily change.
I used it too. Worked well.