In a previous message, Neal McDermott wrote:

The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.

All UK ISPs *allow* you to connect using any OS. They just won't support anything other than Windows or MacOS (with a few exceptions). So, I'd just try connecting. You should be able to get the relevant details (phone number and server addresses) reasonably easily. Having said that, BT are by no means the cheapest or best-value ISP around, so it might well be worth checking the others out anyway! HTH John -- John Pettigrew Headstrong Games john@headstrong-games.co.uk Fun : Strategy : Price http://www.headstrong-games.co.uk/ Board games that won't break the bank Fields of Valour: 2 Norse clans battle on one of 3 different boards

Neal McDermott wrote:

Can anyone recommend an reliable, affordable ISP in this area that allows linux connections?

You can use Linux with BT .. they just don't want to support (i.e. answer questions about) Linux. Actually, they don't know very much about Windows or Macs either ;-) I have an ADSL line from them, I've got 3 Linux and 3 Windows machines hooked up to it over a wireless LAN. I can also use the standard dialup with all of them, even my PDA on my mobile phone. sjb

Neal McDermott wrote:

I have just relocated from California to Ashford, Kent, in the UK. The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.

BT works fine. They even have a newsgroup btinternet.linux that tells you how to set up the connections, though you need to have a BTI account to access the newsgroup, a little awkward if, like me, linux is the _only_ way you can access the net. BT itself is reliable, but a lot of the 'phone lines in Kent (I used to live in Canterbury) use aluminium cable which gives poor connections especially after rain. In fairness, when I lost the connection, I 'phoned them up and they replaced some part of the connection to the exchange. -- JDL

Neal McDermott wrote:

Hi, All,

I have just relocated from California to Ashford, Kent, in the UK. The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.

Can anyone recommend an reliable, affordable ISP in this area that allows linux connections?

Thanks.

Neal McDermott

I'm also a California expatriate living in Hertfordshire. I went through a lengthy process and selected breathepro.com. One of my friends swears by dial.pipex.com. If you are in an area with cable TV, I would consider NTL. Broadband Internet penetration is not as pervasive as in Silicon Valley and forget any semblance of "caring" customer care. I've gotten irritated when they start telling me to "open Outlook express and ...." You are basically on your own when it comes to debugging connectivity and not using Windows. Maybe if I had researched some more I would have found an ISP whose tech support could manage non-Windows but I was also in need to connect quickly. I made my choice based on availability, average download speed and price. There's a couple of magazines (whose names I forget since this was 5 months ago) that you can get at "proper" news/book vendors such as W H Smith that just rate and rant about internet ISP's. Note that BT is the same as PacBell with respect to line ownership and passing the buck when you do not chose them as the ISP and problems occur. I hear that BT is OK but there's no need for the OpenWorld stuff. If you are in this forum you just need the DIY connection package. I hope you brought your own broadband modem with you. All hardware costs at least 50% more in the UK. Even at dabs.com or dsl-warehouse.com Otherwise, the beer here is cheaper, plentiful varied and excellent. Cheers and have fun driving on the left.

On Wed, Jan 15, 2003 at 06:51:43PM +0000, neamcd@btopenworld.com wrote:

I have just relocated from California to Ashford, Kent, in the UK. The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.

Can anyone recommend an reliable, affordable ISP in this area that allows linux connections?

If you want a standard dialup (pay per minute) connection, look at www.ukfsn.org - it's a non-profit ISP set up to support Free Software projects in the UK. Personally, I have an ISDN line, and I use unmetered dialup, using something called "Surftime" here in the UK. My ISP is Demon, for many reasons: o They offer Surftime, and they don't throw people off for over-use, like some ISPs (BT) have been doing. o Although they don't officially support Linux, they do have some Linux-aware support people if you're lucky o I've been a customer of theirs for about 7 years; this was before most of the current UK ISPs existed. -- David Smith Work Email: Dave.Smith@st.com STMicroelectronics Home Email: David.Smith@ds-electronics.co.uk Bristol, England GPG Key: 0xF13192F2

My brother uses pipex (http://pipex.co.uk) for broadbend access and is happy with theri service. You could also check if the local cable company offers internet access. In the area lived in, the cable co. does not provide broadband. :( ----- Original Message ----- From: "Neal McDermott" To: Sent: Wednesday, January 15, 2003 6:51 PM Subject: [SLE] UK ISP Question

Hi, All,

I have just relocated from California to Ashford, Kent, in the UK. The house where I am living has a BT internet account, and it seems from their advertising material that you have to have windows or mac to use a BT account.

Can anyone recommend an reliable, affordable ISP in this area that allows linux connections?

Thanks.

Neal McDermott

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