Tom, When I first brought that two-year-old, surplus-from- the-recent-layoffs machine home, it had just been wiped by our IT department. In addition to wiping the hard disks -- to prevent company info from going out the door -- IT dept. made some "homemade" Win 98 CDs for us. (Company had acquired Win 98 legitimately, one license per purchased PC, but had installed Win NT Workstation on them instead, so nobody kept track of the original "this goes with a pre-loaded-PC" CDs.) So, I put on a barebones Win 98 install just to hold the partition in a dual-boot, in case of later need. Then, I installed SuSE 7.3, connected the laptop to my home network, and did some browsing through my ADSL -- I told my brother the computer was coming, and advised him to get ADSL (which I'd verified was available in his area). Basically, I did a trial with my installation to confirm that all the bits seemed to work with SuSE linux. Then, I drove to the east coast (adventure story available separately) and gave the brother his Christmas present. He informed me that the local supplier was experiencing a 6-months backlog for ADSL hookups ("maybe less, but we aren't promising"). "Oh, crap, I said." "Not to worry", sez brother, "they're giving me a dial-up account while I wait." Problem... the computer (and SuSE) was setup for ADSL and the dial-up would be available only the week after I returned home (this was Christmas week, so things were slow/erratic at the provider). So, I had no opportunity to attempt to re-configure for dial-up, in person. You know the rest of the story. But, my point is that I had already proven (before I delivered) that SuSE and the DELL laptop were "compatible enough". The fact of my trying to operate a computer novice by remote (telephone) control, while not being a Linux guru myself, was what killed us, and sent my brother into the clutches of /t/h/e/ /B/o/r/g/ er, I mean Uncle Bill. Sigh. Another innocent, lost. Moan. /k On Thu, 2002-02-21 at 17:47, tom poe wrote:
This message uses a character set that is not supported by
**We gave up. **A buddy of his wiped Linux, installed Windoze 98 and **had him connected before they'd finished enjoying a **couple of beers. No pain. No hassles. No cursing **frustration. **Windows found all the hardware and configured it **without asking any obscure questions. Windows found **the modem and recognized it instantly. Windows asked **two questions to identify the ISP... and he was **connected... browsing and getting e-mail.
Hi: Just a thought. Linux was a "problem". Windows wasn't. That means you had hardware that worked fine with Windows. Now, was that hardware also compatible with Linux? [sorry, haven't followed the thread]. Determining that my hardware was compatible for Linux, I then installed SuSE7.1 with little fuss. After that, all hell broke loose, as I began a long campaign of misreading, not reading the right info, ad nauseum. <grin> hmmmm. Thanks, Tom