[Techtalk] Home Internet access on Linux

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Wed, Sep 24, 2003 at 06:39:11PM +0200 or thereabouts, Dan Richter wrote:
> How easy is it to get Internet access at home with a Linux machine? I'm 
> most interested in ADSL, but using a modem might be a possibility.

My first reaction is that it's very simple and not a problem. Then 
I thought again. :) I think it depends on

    * Your hardware.
    * Your software.
    * Your ISP and whether it will (knowingly :)) support Linux.

Hardware: I just slap a distro onto my box(es) and then I can walk
through the "set up connection" wizard or edit config files (some
distros do it different ways) with no trouble. However, this is 
because I know that all the bits which make up my computer are
supported by Linux. Before installing Linux, it is worthwhile
checking whether all the cards in your hardware are supported.
Particularly you need to check the modem, if you use one. External
modems are less trouble. Internal modems are sometimes semi-supported
at best.

Software: different distros have different degrees of support for
different pieces of hardware. Or used to. I actually don't know
much about this. I have seen the same hardwave take great effort
to get Linux running on with one distro, and Just Install And
Work on another distro. An example I think is still current is
that SuSE has excellent built-in support for ISDN because ISDN
is so popular in Germany, where SuSE is based. 

Your ISP. Some ISPs actively support Linux. Others will say "if
you can get it working with the information we give Windows users,
fine, but it's up to you to support yourself". Others just don't
care. And finally, I have heard of ISPs who say "Oh, you can't
do that" but I don't know anyone who has actually had that happen:
it's just something you hear of.

I have known people who are familiar with Windows and who are
actually using Linux pretend they're using Windows when on tech
support calls. "Okay, what does Network Wotsit say?" results in
"Hmm, that looks for this, I can look that up with Linux, then
read the results the way Network Wotsit would display them". 
And they then read the "results" out. However, I don't think this
is always a useful tactic. I just include it because it made 
me laugh.

So that's perhaps a little more discouraging than my initial
"It should just work". It should, but it's safer to say
"It depends" :) 

> By the way, I'm a programmer, but I don't have any experience as a system 
> administrator. I've used /etc/fstab and /etc/rc.d/* and that's about it. 
> I'm not interested in an option that requires recompiling the kernel.

As far as some of the more end-user-friendly distros are concerned,
you should never have to touch the kernel. That's what distros are
for. They put everything they think most people need in, just in
case. Other distros are a bit more "well, people can always recompile
if they really need something special". And then there are the
source-only distros, which you will want to avoid :) 

This is a very -general- answer, but it was a very general question.
For anything along the lines of "will my setup work?" you will need
to post the details of exactly what hardware you have. Most hardware
is easy to find on Google. If you find pages about "I got my ....
working", be sure to check whether they mean they just plugged it
in or whether they patched something or rebuilt something :)

(Incidentally, Google searches on ISP names and "linux+modem" will
often result in the settings you need for that ISP if you are
using Linux, too.)

So yeah. It's entirely possible to have Linux at home, but if you
don't want to have a nightmare setting it up, check out the 
combination of your hardware and your intended distro first. It
makes things so much simpler.

Telsa