Hi

Please excuse my complete n00by-ness, but I am a long time Windoze user trying to make the switch to linux with Debian. I have sucessfully installed Debian 3.0r2 (Woody) but before I can really do anything else I need to get on the net, which requires getting my speedtouch 330 USB modem working.

After a week of solid searching about the net, I have managed to suss out that there is a debian kernal patch available from the debian.org site. I have downloaded the "kernel-patch-2.4-speedtouch_1.5-1_all.deb" file, and copied it from a CD into my /root directory. Trouble is, I don't really know what to do with it. Because I used the vanilla install, I have the 2.2.20 kernel running, but I am hoping this patch will still work.

I have managed to figure out that I have to do a dpkg -i filename.deb, and I now have /usr/src/kernel-patches/all/speedtouch-2_4_10/speedtouch-2.4.10-patch.

I know it's a real idiot question, but how the hell do I actually patch my kernel to make this thing work. There are lots of guides and references on the net, to do with makefiles and kernel images and stuff, but I think my windoze brain is just incapable of understanding.

Can anyone tell me (in very simple terms) what I have to do in order to get this thing working? I think I'm going mad!

Thanks in advance,

MrG

Firstly I would suggest you either do a re-install (good practise) using the bf24 option of install (if I remember correctly use F3 option on the boot disk to find install versions) or alternatively and perhaps easier install the 2.4.18 kernel. You can install synaptic for gui or aptitude or simply apt-cache search kernel-image-2.4.18 and then apt-get install the image specifically as they come in variuos flavours. To find out about kernel compiling from source and applying patches then go have a look at this article.

Thanks for the help The link you provided looks like it might be able to get me through compiling a kernel. I'll give it a whirl and see what happens...