Linux may be dropping RNDIS. Do we have another option of USB tethering?

As there is a discussion of dropping the RNDIS driver from Linux kernel, and all of us Linux users probably need it to tether our SailfishOS devices over USB. Could the system adopt another USB-Ethernet layer in a future release? Or is this hardware dependent?

I think a driver not present in kernel can be loaded later at boot time, so it should still remain possible if this driver is installed manually on the Linux system.
Coders, please correct me if I’m wrong in my assumption!

CDC-ECM has been available for a long time on Linux and the USB gadget supports it if compiled in. Only problem is that Windows isn’t shipped with drivers by default.

There is no need to worry soon. We have several years of time before current Linux kernel became a kernel for Android and SFOS.

Well, it is required on both sides…

Not exactly. This is the same kernel.

Some of my ports are using EEM and ECM drivers instead of rndis

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FYI: After updating to Fedora 42 (and linux 6.14) when connecting
USB cable and choosing (share internet or developer mode - I have those in finnish so I don’t know the exact english terms), the interface and ip (192.168.2.x) does not appear as it used to be.

Fortunately, for me I usually need just ssh access to the phone,
for which manual:
$ sudo ifconfig wwp0s20f0u1 192.168.2.11
works (so I haven’t looked further - and maybe route (when needed) is all that is left).

sudo dmesg -T prints:

[Mon Apr 28 22:37:07 2025] rndis_host 1-1:1.0 wwan0: register 'rndis_host' at usb-0000:00:14.0-1, Mobile Broadband RNDIS device, 66:4e:19:7a:05:f3
[Mon Apr 28 22:37:07 2025] rndis_host 1-1:1.0 wwp0s20f0u1: renamed from wwan0

Internet search fedora 42 rndis gives quite a few hits discussing the same issue…