[Scottish] several linux problems

[Kyle Gordon]

On Tuesday 18 December 2007 14:22:23 Richard Wright wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I've got a few problems I was wondering if anyone could help with?
>
> The hardware is a toshiba laptop from 2000 with 1.2ghz, 512m ram, 20gb hdd,
> a dial up pci card and a lan card. OS is slackware 11. The ctrl key doesn't
> work, so I'm sending it off to get fixed before I sort anything else.
>
> 1)Connecting to the internet
>
> I've successfully installed linux a number of times now, but I'm not sure
> how to get it hooked up to the intenet.
>
> There are several internet access points I can use:
>
> a) A dial up connection at my parents home.
Forget dialup. You'll regret it if you choose this method.

>
> b) ADSL at the university (will probably require legit login ID)
>

Speak to Network Services at the uni for login details

> c) A wi-fi connection in my flat from my neighbours. May be encrypted.

If they give you the password, then you're onto a winner.

> I do want to get internet access in my own flat, but BT want £120 from me
> first. Before I do that, I want to make sure I know how connect to the net.
>
> 2)Connection hardware
> I'm also going to buy a new wi-fi card so I can use my laptop anywhere
> there is a wireless network, and I wondered if anyone knows of a good
> generic linux compatible wireless card that comes with required drivers if
> necessary.

Something compatible may be found at 
http://www.linuxcompatible.org/compatlistcat29.html. As with any hardware 
purchase, a significant amount of googling and general research should ensure 
that you find a card that works nicely with Linux.

>
> 3)Kernel configuration
> A lot of the hardware doesn't seem to register on linux. Specifically the
> internal dial up modem doesn't seem to register. This may be because the
> kernel is not properly configured. I've had a go at kernel configuration,
> using a menu, but most of the options are not intuitively named. I'm
> looking at "the linux kernel" which is good theory, but it doesn't directly
> solve the problem at hand.

See above about forgetting dialup. Lucent modems, and generic laptop modems, 
are renowned for being either crap, or unusable in anything other than 
Windows.

> The priority is to connect to the internet. If I can do that, then a lot of
> other problems are more easily solved.
>
> =

Kyle