[ale] BellSouth on Linux

[Greg]

Speedfactory seems to support any *nix or *BSD or leastways they have
answered my questions.
www.speedfactory.net

Greg 

-----Original Message-----
From: ale-bounces at ale.org [mailto:ale-bounces at ale.org] On Behalf Of Michael
To: ale at ale.org
B. Trausch
Sent: Sunday, December 18, 2005 2:38 PM
To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts
Subject: Re: [ale] BellSouth on Linux

On Sun, 2005-12-18 at 10:33 -0800, Mark B wrote:
>
>  I am sincerely asking for help.  I am a Linux newbie.   I currently
> have win 2000 and want to raze my hard drive and install  Linux. I 
> want to sign up for BellSouth dialup, and use Linux exclusively as my 
> o/s.  However Bellsouth insists they don't support Linux.  Surely 
> there is a way around this.  Any suggestions and input on how to do 
> this?  Thanks very much for any help you can provide.
> 

I could be wrong, but I do not believe that there are any ISPs that
"actively" support systems such as Linux or *BSD (other then OS X).
Typically, this means that you're on your own for the configuration of the
computer to get online, but, they'll still support connection issues for
their provided access (e.g., in the case of say, a cable modem, something
like "I'm not getting block sync" or whatever).  I'm not sure if you're
talking about xDSL or actual narrowband dialup Internet, however, if you go
with xDSL, it's very easy to set up:  Get a router that will maintain the
connection for you, and just hook up the Linux box to the router.  Assuming
that the router is configured to manage internal DHCP by default, it will
"just work" in most cases, depending on the distribution you use, of course.

If you're talking about narrowband dialup, someone else will need to step up
and help, as it's been years since I've used such a configuration and I
honestly haven't kept up with the changes in how all of that stuff works in
today's distributions.  I remember that back in the 90s when I used it last,
you had to jump through a million hoops to get it running.  :-P  I'm sure
that's probably changed by now with many, if not all, distributions.

	Later,
	Mike

-- 
Michael B. Trausch                                     fd0man at gmail.com

"Why geeks like computers: unzip, strip, touch, finger, grep, mount, fsck,
more, yes,fsck,fsck,fsck,umount, sleep."  :-)