[Discuss] Use Linux laptop as wifi router? Is that even the right solution?

[david at thekramers.net (David Kramer)]

I recently became the proud owner of a Roku 3 box.  Very happy with it
minus one or two small details.  For grins, I brought it with me on
vacation, and immediately ran into the problem that the hotel wifi
requires an authentication page be filled out, which the Roku can't do
since it doesn't have a browser.

Googling around on my laptop for a while, I've seen the following
solutions for this problem, some of which involve doing things with my
Linux laptop (Kubuntu 13.10 currently):

1) Change my laptop's MAC address temporarily to that of the Roku,
authenticate, then try to connect with the Roku.  Sounds reasonable,
except that it didn't work.  Not sure if I didn't change the mac address
right.  Might have to retry this, as it's the option that doesn't
require more hardware.  I found conflicting instructions on how to do
this on the command line, and every single page that talks about Network
Manager shows different options, since it changes so much and is
different betweek KDE and Gnome, etc.

2) Add a USB WiFi stick onto my laptop and set it up as a
router/repeater/whatever: I already have one, so nothing to buy but I
would have to bring it with me.  Don't have it right now so I couldn't
try it out, but here too I found lots of incomplete or unclear info.  If
there's a straightforward way to do this, please let me know.  If I need
to upgrade to the latest Kubuntu I'll do that.

3) Pick up a travel router and use it to NAT.  I see differing
information on whether the hotel network will see one MAC address or
each device's MAC address. This option really only works if the hotel
has wired internet (the hotel I stay at the most does).  But apparently
you have to run it in a specific mode that not all support, but I
couldn't find a consistent name for that mode, other than "Bridged isn't
what you want".  Some pages mentioned that some units can go "wifi to
wifi" with half the bandwidth.  I'll have to find that link.  Maybe it
does sending and receiving on different channels or something like
that.  I would be OK with spending money on this if need be, and I knew
it would work.  I also have a WRT54G I'm not using that I could test it
out with before buying something smaller.

Did I miss any options?

Does anyone have recent info on how to do any of these?

Thanks in advance.