Linux is far more secure because of the unix influenced permissions and filesystems. I felt bad for you at the beginning of this thread, but then i realized that you are just a troll.

If you don't like linux then don't use it. However you should not post in an obviously pro linux forum about how much more stable winxp is to linux(and how the hell did you come up with that?)

How would you like it if i walked into your church and started screaming about how whatever god you worship sucks and you should only worship my god?

I don't think you would like it.

I agree.

Whilst the title of the thread was inflammatory, the actual complaint was valid. I had nothing but trouble with 9.1 and vowed never to return to Mandy. And yet here I am, on Mandy 10 which is fast and stable. The point is, we are supposed to be Linux Advocates - simply bashing Microsoft and annoying people who need help will not work. Reverse psychology it may be, but it is clearly not working.

xxvm1 has not yet had the chance to enjoy Linux. The first distro, for whatever reason, did not work on his hardware. Rather than give up, he allowed himself to be persuaded to use an older version - which now works.

There do appear to be drivers for this modem - go here (if they are not suitable, my search is here).

Right - if these attacks continue, I will close down the thread. We are here to help each other, not to attack them. Carry on.

The website of your DSL Modem company should offer support for you to download the drivers. If not, connect it to the PC with an ethernet cord, rather than a USB cable. If it doesn't have that, then I'm sorry I didn't help you much. You can always search www.google.com/linux for DSL modem drivers. At least it's worth a try!

RE: XavierP - Moderator

You pretty much hit the nail on the head. Yeah the title was inflammatory, but that was intentional to draw attention to my actual real problem. I have no motivation to cause trouble but some users clearly wanted to pick a fight because of the thread title, rather than read the post. I have no interest in initiating trouble but if i'm attacked i will obviously retaliate. Let's have no more sillyness.

Some did read the post and pointed me towards the more stable Mandrake 9.2 on the 2.4 kernel. I have heard that the Mandrake 10 distro on the 2.6 kernel is good but with me being a total linux newbie with more or less no command line knowledge then i think the more stable established kernel is better for me personally. I did immidiately thank those individuals for their help, and am always grateful for any advice.

Mandrake 9.2 is going well. Only one crash so far. Lycoris Desktop ate my Windows XP despite being installed on a seperate partition, SuSE 8.2 crashed at the very sight of USB on install and boot up, SuSE 9.1 failed to install fully, Mandrake 10 crashed if i dared move the mouse, let alone open a program. Now considering i'm a linux newbie and i've had all these problems, i'm quite proud of my motivation to discover the whole new world of linux. I could have easily given up after the fist distro or two.

I'm still running a dual boot system with Mandrake 9.2 and Windows XP. I shall now go and attempt to do something with this Conexant AccessRunner driver that XavierP has so kindly pointed out. No doubt i shall be back with additional problems soon, but if i can get online in Mandrake i shall be incredibly grateful.

xxvm1 - while the title of your post clearly did the job, I'd try to avoid doing it in future. Normally I ignore these sorts of post, except maybe to ask that they get moved to General, if I weren't modding this forum I'd never have read through this.

I am glad you have stuck with it. Linux can be frustrating at times but is definitely worth it. The fact that you have tried various distros means you are well placed to offer opinions on the various ones - even if all you type is that you tried it and it didn't work!

As I recall, you were installing on fairly new hardware (I may be wrong), because h/w manufacturers don't always do drivers for Linux, we often have to wait for some hacker to get it working and tell us how to do it. While thi may not be the greatest of advice - sometimes it is better to try it with older hardware. If you have an older pc/laptop lying around, try installing the other distros on it. Alternatively, Knoppix is good because not only can you see what will run/work without actually installing, you can often lift the config files off your Knoppix system to use with an installed distro (with a small amount of tweaking.

Anyway, enjoy using Linux and feel free to post your questions - with less inflammatory/more detailed titles

if you have an ADSL isp, once you have your drivers set up for the modem you can make your internet connection using the DrakeConnect tool in Mandrake Control Center (aka: MCC).

before doing any of the following, shut down any firewall you may be running. the native Mandrake firewall called Shorewall may be set up by default. to check, go to a terminal, su to root, then type service shorewall stop (hit enter). if it was running, that will stop it. if it wasn't, no harm no foul.

to start MCC, open a terminal, get into root mode by typing su (hit enter) at the prompt, enter your password, then type mcc (hit enter). go to "network & internet"->"make new connection". the wizard will open up. it's pretty self explanatory as to what to do from there. make sure you choose ADSL as your connection type, not LAN or DHCP or something else. it will detect your eth0 card & walk you through your ISP configuration. also, when you get to the "connect to the internet" part of the wizard, choose pppoe (ppp over ethernet). you'll need to know basic stuff......... user name, password, dns address, default hostname. if you don't know some of those things, you can use Windows, start your internet connection, open a DOS prompt & type ipconfig /all (hit enter) for the settings. there's also a GUI ipconfig for WinXP, but unfortunately the command (name) escapes me now. back in MCC, once you're done entering your info you'll be asked if you want the internet to start at boot (that's up to you. personally, i don't do it to save some boot time.) it will then tell you if you're properly configured & attempt to connect. if it's successful you will be told to restart X. you can do that by hitting the ctrl+alt+backspace keys, or you can just log out of & back into KDE (or Gnome or whatever DE you're using). personally, i would do a full reboot to shut down the connection & make sure you get no errors during boot & that everything is detected. if you opt not to use the "internet at boot" option, once you're back in your desktop you can open a terminal, su to root, & type adsl-start (hit enter) to start the connection. conversely, you would type adsl-stop to stop it.

once you're up & running with internet, you should seriously consider running a firewall. the aforementioned Shorewall is nice, easy to use, & serves it's purpose quite well. but, feel free to use whatever you like that works for you. if you need help with Shorewall, feel free to ask (but possibly start a new thread for it.)

and, on a side note, it's nice to see this thread taking a productive turn.

otis

Modem Problems

Ok so first of all let me state my modem and settings. I have an Origo ASU-8000 ADSL USB modem. It connects obviously through USB and has no ethernet connection option. It connects via PPPoATM and has an Conexant AccessRunner chipset. There are 3 green lights on the front; the one on the left (USB) indicates usb/power connection, the one in the middle (RX) flashes when i am downloading, and the one on the right (LINK) flashes when i boot up as it connects to ADSL, and stays on when ADSL is connected.

Now during a Windows XP bootup it flashes for a few seconds as it connects, then just as the desktop appears it stays on and is connected. However, when i bootup my Mandrake 9.2 there is no flashing, no light whatsoever. So ive clicked the link supplied by the moderator above there, and downloaded the following file:

ppp-2.4.1-6plf.i586.rpm

So i logged into Mandrake (not as root) and pulled the file out of my USB pendrive and onto the desktop. If you have ever seen one of those windows "unpack software" type files then it looks like one of those. Anyway so i double click it and a screen pops up "already installed" or words to that effect in a box entitled "X gmessage".

Now clearly the Conexant AccessRunner driver isnt working cos the LINK light doesnt flash. HOWEVER, im not sure i have actually installed it yet. Any ideas ?

go to MCC->hardware->hardware. check to see if your modem is detected & using the correct driver in there. if it isn't, then click on the modem in the left panel, then use the config tool at the bottm right. if it is detected, but using the wrong driver, do the same thing but select the correct driver with the config tool.

before you do that, to check if the ppp-2.4.1 drivers are indeed installed, go to MCC->remove software & type ppp & search. see what version of the rpm it finds. if it differs from the version you downloaded from plf, uninstall the current version then install the plf version.

otis

cheers dood i'll try that now and come back with tales of woe soon

one other thing (that i should have asked earlier.........sorry).......... you do have your modem plugged in & turned on while installing the driver, correct? i just assumed you did, but if you didn't make sure the modem is connected & running before doing any configs or driverr installs. and, make sure it's plugged in & turned on during boot.

otis

it is stable for me, never crashed or froze once.

Yeah its all plugged in all the time. I may be a newbie but come on give me some credit!

Ok so here's the latest:

Followed your advice. Went to MCC > Remove Software > Search "ppp" and removed the drivers that came up (ppp-2.4.1-12mdk), cos they didnt match the ones for my modem (ppp-2.4.1-6plf.i586.rpm).

So now i presume i have no modem drivers, or at least no similar pppoatm to conflict. However when i double click the drivers installer file it still says "Everything already installed" when i don't think it is at all. Is this because im not running as root? Or does that not make a difference.

I also went to MCC > Hardware > Hardware > Unknown/Others > ADSL USB Modem and clicked it like you said. But there was no "config" button bottom left as you said. Only OPTIONS and HELP and QUIT left to right.

Yes I agree, Slackware has a reputation for being stable. In fact it's my distro of choice. However, if you want the automatic installs like Mandrake has you will be dissapointed. Slackware is great, and I mean great in that it gives you the ability to change things easy that I find very hard to do in Mandrake. But that's just my opinion.

Anyway, going without rpm is not a big deal with Slack. There is support for rpm directly, however you need to turn off dependcent checking. There is a wonderfull tool called rpm2tgz which converts binary rpms to slackware tgz packages, which you can then install via the pkgtool or installpkg (man on both those for more info). Or, you can get swaret from www.swaret.org which has dependency checking built in.

Brian

i'm sorry. i'm busy for the rest of the day. i'll get back with more help later tonight or tomorrow. there's a few other ideas i have. maybe somebody else will pick up on this before i get back.

otis