Linux?

Anyone know of a good linux distro out there thast supports a wide range of hardware/modems?

I've tried ubunto, but both times i tried to install it failed during installation and left me with a non-working os.

I tried Mepis, that appeared to have worked, but then it insisted on starting in a resolution my monitor doesn't support, hence another non-working os.

I've seen fedora which appears to be nice but I can't find the dvd image link anywhere. Anyone feel like raiding their convoluted site for me and finding it? :)

Can't help with your modem or display issues, as I use Ubuntu 5.10 myself without any problems. However, you can find the DVD ISO for Fedora below.

http://www.falkotimme.com/howtos/perfect_setup_fedora_core_4/index.php

MEPISLITE

It picked up everything on my system when I installed it!

Dabz

Any Debian variant will do. Like Ubuntu. What kind of 'modem' is it?

It's just your basic bog standard win modem. The modem actually worked fine with the mepis live cd. but it only gave me the option to use vesa when booting the livecd. The actual os after installation gives me no such option so i'm left with a dead monitor after booting.

Hit alt-ctl etc to reboot and the monitor flicks back on as it goes into text mode.

I need the win modem so i can download modems for my broadband modem once linux is installed. Don't know of a way to access a ext3 filesystem in windows to copy it over.

Well there's a program called 'Mount Everything' that will mount Linux file systems (amoungst other things) on Windows.

Win (or software) modems are a bit of a hassle to get working under Linux.

As for fixing your screen there should be an xFree86 conf file somewhere on your drive (like /etc/x11/ for instance) that you can change manually to set the refreshrate and resolution xFree runs in, to stop your monitor from crapping out. Depending on how your distro is setup, you should be able to hit CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to kill off xFree and get back into text mode. Ofcourse some 'user friendly' distros startup xFree again right away - but if yours doesn't you should be able to get to that file and change it to something more suitable.

Otherwise, try Xandros.

Last I hear, only the Lucent Winmodems are workable now?

Unfortunately 95% of all modems sold nowadays are winmodems... It's half as expensive to have your CPU do the work rather than make the modem smart enough to do it itself, so everyone goes the cheap route.

Flameduck, do you know of a freeware alternative to mount everything?
I found their website OK, but the trial is read only access and is limited to 1gb partitions.

Don't much want to buy a whole program for the sake of getting one program to run.

But your idea of changing the config file seems ideal, just not sure how to go about it. Could you help me out by listing the commands i'll need, like if it was windows, I'd use Dir to list the dirs and find the file I need to alter, then run edit.
But i'm clueless when it comes to linux.

Xlsor, that's the type of modem I have currently, and it works fine in mepis livecd. No such luck in ubanto which i finally installed yesterday only to find this out.

Nope sorry. I'm not quite sure but you MAY be able to mount ext2/3 partitions through cygwin, but I haven't the faintest clue how you would go about it.

You use the 'ls' command to get a list of files in whatever directory, and if you're lucky you'll have 'pico' or 'nano' installed as editors (those seem to be the most Windows user friendly). Otherwise you'll have to hack it with 'emacs' or 'vi'.

If you haven't got 'pico' or 'nano' you can get it by doing 'apt-get install nano' or something to that effect.

I always break out in a cold sweat when people start to talk about apt-get install and other such techno babble.

Thanks for the help, i'll try it tomorrow.