yes you heard right, I recently find out that one can use an Android feature called “USB tethering” to get internet through an Android device. which is really cool since now you don’t have to worry about your wifi card not working in linux since you can just use your old Android device as wifi access point and have internet. not only it’s supported in Linux but it’s also supported in BSD world too. this can enable people in trying out distros like Guix, Parabola etc which doesn’t provide non-free firmware.
just wanted to share this amazing feature I didn’t know :)
As you suggested I used to do this when distro hopping on my old HP Elitebook that needed Realtek WiFi drivers to be installed manually most of the time.