On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 13:15:15 +0000 (UTC), Gregory L. Hansen <glhansen@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:
> In article <bmqfi0$pca8b$1@ID-45790.news.uni-berlin.de>,
> Laurel Amberdine <circle@mtco.com> wrote:
>>On Sat, 18 Oct 2003 02:01:24 +0000 (UTC), Gregory L. Hansen
>><glhansen@steel.ucs.indiana.edu> wrote:

>>If it's a Plug-n-Play modem you'll probably need the isapnp tools to give
>>your modem the magic wiggly bits to know what it's supposed to do. Or
>>something. (I haven't done that in years. PCI is nice.)
>
> I don't know if it's a PnP modem. I thinking of just getting another,
> they cost around $20, but I'd want to rule out software issues, first.

I forgot to ask (or maybe you already said, and I forgot that) does your
modem have jumpers on it? That could make things a lot easier.

>>> I'd like to think I could spend $50 on "real" CDs from the Mandrake store
>>> and all the problems would be solved, but then I imagine spending $50 and
>>> being exactly where I am now, except $50 poorer.
>>
>>Two questions: do you specifically need *Mandrake*, and do you have a CD
>>burner on your Mac?
>
> I took to Mandrake because it was suggested as a distribution that's easy
> for the beginner to set up and likely to work on any random collection of
> equipment.

Hmm.

> There's a computer store near me whose Linux support consists
> of a few Red Had boxes laying around, I could always pick up one of those.

I wouldn't suggest Red Hat, personally. The latest distributions are
aimed at a corporate market. A dialup connecion isn't even part of
the standard setup. They also expect pretty modern hardware. OTOH, there
are a lot of people using Red Hat, so you could certainly get help more
easily.

>>You might want to consider Debian, which can be downloaded and installed
>>completely over the internet. Having a CD burner will make it easier, but
>>I've done it from floppies. You can get a minimal install going with a
>>few floppies, then get your modem going (with, ah, luck and persistence)
>>then download the rest of the system.
>
> I have a burner at work. You like Debian?

I like Debian very much. Just about every application that ever worked
with Linux is in a Debian distribution. Package installation, removal,
and upgrading is *much* easier with .deb packages than with RPMs (which
are used by Red Hat, Mandrake, and SuSE). The new installer is very easy.
They say you could teach a chicken to install Debian now: just keep
hitting enter.

The "difficult" part about Debian is that configuration is (mostly) done
through text files. Of course, configuration actually *is* always through
text files in Linux. Some distributions have written pretty graphical
interfaces to create the configuration files. This is nice and easy until
something doesn't work and you have no idea what to change or how.
Debian packages always have man pages, and the configuration files are
commented with clear examples.

Right now I'm running SuSE though, because my hardware is too new for
Debian. It's fine, but when something goes wrong and the setup tools
can't fix it, I'm lost.

>>I've also got copies of SuSE 8.1, Redhat, er... 7.2, 7.3, 8-something, and
>>maybe 9 around, along with Debian "Woody". I could make copies of any of
>>these and mail them to you.
>
> That's a kind offer. I'll see how things go on this end, first.

Good luck! I'm sure you can get something working.


--
- Laurel * * * http://amberdine.com