[ale] Which OS for PPP to ISP?

[Martin B. Brilliant]

I've been told that this mailing list recently covered the topic of
communication with Internet Service Providers, and I need some advice
on that subject.

I use PPP to my ISP for mail, news, www, and ftp. For mail and news
I want the connection down most of the time, while I'm reading and
composing, and up only to transfer messages. For www and ftp the
connection must be up all the time. I also want to do other things
during ftp downloads. And I have to choose one operating system to
do this in, because you can't reboot in the middle of ftp.

I've been using MS-Windows for about two years, and Linux for about
two weeks, so I know Windows better than Linux. Windows, with Trumpet
Winsock and the apps that know and use it, is fine for jacking the
connection up and down on demand. But ftp transfers stop and start,
or end prematurely, because Windows can't do preemptive multitasking.
Linux is great at multitasking during ftp. But as far as I can tell,
its mail and news programs can't deal with PPP links that go up and
down, because they were written for UNIX, which is designed for
full-time communications. 

Am I missing something? It looks to me as though I will have to give 
up one of my objectives, either part-time connections or full 
multitasking - unless Linux has capabilities I don't know about.

                                                Marty
Martin B. Brilliant at home in Holmdel, NJ