I've been trying out different types of distrobutions and all have found my network card, except for Debian (woody) I installed it with the 2.4 kernel (should I have used vanilla, I heard it has more drivers?). I don't have enough knowledge about Linux yet to figure out why it can't find it, how to install it, or how to configure it.

For some reson when I configured the kernel during the installation it allowed me to install PPP, however, I have a winmodem, no other distro has found that before!!! But when I went through the install on configuring my network, it allowed me to configure an IP for my system and then the PPP???

Perhaps I'm incorrect, but i thought PPP was for modems, is it for network cards as well? If so, then when I uninstalled the PPP modual why didn't the network configuration window pop up?

Perhaps it isn't seeing either??? I'm a bit confused.

By the way, my winmodem is a Rockwell, and my Ethernet card (what I NEED working) is a Linksys 10/100 Etherfast. I do have the drivers for the NIC on a floppy but without documentation, I have no clue on how to install it. And I don't have internet access at home to look it up.

I do have kernel 2.4.22 I would like to install, if that helps. (any suggestions/websites on how to do this, please feel free)

This is a lot of questions I know, but I'm desparate to rid myself of windows, thanks for any and all help you can provide.

Rivitir

In Debian, you're in charge of configuring your network card. It can be a bit of a pain, but it's worth the effort to be able to use Debian

The installer allows you to include ppp without a modem as it's useful for things other than dialing to an ISP, but you probably won't need it. The most important thing to do right know is find the name of the module you need for your ethernet card. You have it on disk, and it might also be included in your kernel. Try '/sbin/modprobe module' as root and see if you get lucky.

Ok, I'll try that, thanks. But once I get it installed, how do I configure it?

Did you happen to write down the utility the installer used to configure devices? I think it's something like /use/sbin/base-config, but that's a guess. I usually just edit /etc/network/interfaces. Let us know if you're having problems with this (after you can bring up your card) and we'll explore further.

Base-config is the correct program, it allows you to configure your time, network, etc. Thanks, and I'll let you know what happened.

Type lspci -v to have a look at your pci devices. Check the manufacturer and chipset of the card from the output and look for and appropriate module. It helps if you have the kernel source or search google for the right module. Then the modprobe command will be useful. If you're feeling impatient, you can try the modprobe -t drivers/net * command. This will try to load every network driver one at a time. If you didn't catch which driver was loaded from the resulting output, type lsmod to see if any new modules appeared. Then if you see a new module, type ifconfig eth0 up followed by ifconfig. If no errors came up and there is a eth0 field in the output of ifconfig then your card/driver works. You still have a little bit to do after that to get it fully working but the hardware part is over.

I think (but not sure) that your card needs the "tulip" driver. Do a modprobe tulip or choose it from the list during the config screens. Then you can set your ip address and such using the prompts if you are in the config screens or just use ifconfig.