I have not attempted this before, but I wanted to take my laptop into town. In the van I have a full size desktop which dual boots windows XP and Linux.
I use the Laptop running linux via a wifi router normally and use the Orange 3G on my desktop under windows when not near a WiFi hotspot.

Anyway, my attempt to use an orange 3G Dongle on Linux.
1) Plug it in

Erm.  That’s it.  It just worked.  none of that faffing about waiting for windows to find each device and wanting to install drivers.  It just worked.  Why am I surprised?

I am surprised because I use Linux mainly for servers and not for desktop use.  I remember my last attempts at Linux on the desktop meant loads of work with video and sound card drivers for hardware that was really popular.  I expected a brand new 3G USB modem to be tricky.  Wow,  I am shell shocked and it kind of makes this article a little pointless.

So there you have it.  Getting Orange 3G on a linux laptop,  plug it in.