anyone had any luck setting up the phone modem in Ubuntu?

I have personally never tried, but my father (who matches or exceeds me in geekhood) has for quite some time. He was never able to work all the kinks out and settled on the simpler solution of using wmwifirouter to just turn his phone into a hotspot and then connect via his ubuntu netbook's wifi card. You could now do this for free with the HTCwifisharing app that can be DLed from xda developers. Both of these programs basically take your 3g connection and broadcast via the phone's wifi. By doing it this way you remove the need of getting linux to "talk" to a winmo device - which from what I have been told is a hassle if it can be done at all. All it has to do is connect with a normal wifi connection.

Thats my 2 cents - hope it helps

BONUS - I forgot to mention that your carrier cannot tell the difference between this use and regualr data use - so no tethering fees either - this is the way to go.

doh! I forgot about wmwifirouter. I had an early version of it installed on my 760 and never moved it over to my HTC Touch. I will check it out. Thanks.