Hey SM,
How are you today ? Like you, i'm in dial-up hell, so don't expect a lot of quick answers from me.
I'm fairly new to linux, but already addicted to it and still learning.
The first distro i got was slackware - i know, bad choice, but i was 100% newbie
I would consider myself as a quick learner, i didn't have a lot of trouble at all installing slackware. It was a distro from '96, so i really couldn't do stuff with it.
But now i've got mandrake 8.1, and it's great, the installer is very powerful. It will detect any internet connections/lan cards and connecting to the 'net is a piece of cake. I already helped two friends of mine upgrading from winblows to linux, and got their adsl running like a charm.
Be sure to check out your local library for linux-for-newbies books. Also, when in linux, just go looking for commands you never heard of before !
I once simply tried 'mo' for fun, and bash added it on to the word 'mount' !
I thought: Hey what's this ?
So i said:
# mount --help
That's just one example about my linux learning process. Nowadays, if you just say 'f*** it !!', throw away all windoze and start with linux from an empty hdd, you never ever want to get back to windows. Believe me, i got a friend of mine who simply let me erase his two hdd's and put a running mandrake system on it.
About the modems, i once read a 'hacker tutorial' from Carolyn Meinel that said 'Linux works best with software that isn't Brand X'.
My point is, get hardware with names you've heard of before. (Mostly the expensive ones
)
I got a winmodem from lucent, and it works fine under linux ! It was once of the few supported, but now it works !
So my advice is just to dive into linux, and see what comes ! Linux is full of stuff, you can instantly start 'netting or typing or whatever !
Welcome !
[ July 22, 2002: Message edited by: -=f00bar=- ]