Does anyone know of any ways you can access Netzero from a machine that runs Linux but is not tainted by that god-awful thing called Linspire? I am trying to set my grandpa up with Linux, but Linspire won't install (it's a copy I wasted my money on and don't even use anymore, anyone reading this, DONT BUY LINSPIRE). Netzero only officially supports Linspire, and my grandpa is too lazy to contact them and I don't have an account with them to contact them. (What kind of friggin stupid company doesn't even offer a free way for potential new customers to contact them?). I don't understand why they don't offer a generic Linux program on their site for members, I'm pretty sure if it can be written for Linspire it can also be written for any other Linux distribution.

Do these companies not realize that it IS infact possible to write proprietary software for Linux. Do they also not realize that there are people who would like to use their service that don't run Windows/Mac/Linspire. I mean, Linux is either approaching or has surpassed the Mac in numbers on the desktop (depends who you ask), and it's not like Linspire accounts for all the Linux users. And if they are too lazy to do it themselves (write the software), why don't they release some info to the Linux community and let them write the software?

i think they probably have some kinda business deal with linspire...

Lol, Oh well, Telus (only locally in certain areas of Canada) is a way better provider. Way faster, and I don't need to use a Piece of $h!t OS either (in Mac's case, not bad OS, just too expensive to run).

If there was a rants forum here, this would be one for it. Since we don't, it goes to General.

If you have a specific technical question about configuring an Internet connection, go ahead and post that in the Networking forum.

Alright, lol, sorry, it was originally going to be a question asking if people knew any work arounds, but I was frustrated from fiddling around for hours to no avail. Anyways, I'll convince my grandpa to ditch netzero as their service is absolutly horrible anyways.

It looks like your options are:
a) Load Linspire so that NetZero will support you.
b) Post some relavent error messages so that we might be able to help you.

As stated above, Linspire will not install on his box. Also, Linspire's support number doesn't even phone them. It comes up with a message stating that it couldn't mount the root partition. Even if it would load, I found Linspire was worse for stability than Windows and I had nothing but problems with it on my desktop before I finally switched to SuSE. He may as well stick with Windows.

Since there isn't even a program for other distros, there are no relevant error messages to post. I was just asking if anyone knew of any ways to access their service from a non-Linspire Linux computer. An example of this would be Linspire open source program that allows you to connect to AOL. Does anyone know of any programs like this for Netzero?

I am a newbie to Linux period. I am running rh9 on my other pc and I am too having trouble with the Netzero dialup. I tried using the KPPP and it will dial up then say connected to the network then boom kicks me off and says something about authentication and maybe the wrong username/password. So is there no fix to this?? I hope there is becuase Ill be on dial up till December which really blows. Anyways Hello to you all and Ill be visiting this site more frequently

Well, I guess Netzero doesn't want my grandpa's business then. Just pick some local ISP, they generally will work with any OS.

What you need is a preinstalled distro and a decent ISP, not that http://www.netzero.net/

Looks like National Enquirer

netzero = www.zeronet.net

Well no, I know how to install Linspire just fine, it just doesn't want to work with his hard drive or something. I'm going to either try to figure it out or else he may just use SUSE or something for the time being until he switches to a new ISP

With a little work, you can make SuSE to look like anything you want. One of the advantages of Linux is being able to customize it to the extreme. You may even want to install this desktop for him:

http://www.xpde.com/

or Gnome instead of KDE. Although similar, it's quite easy to modify Gnome to look just like a WinXP environment (not that KDE can't though). If you are using an older version of SusE or Redhat, you might even consider this:

http://www.novell.com/products/desktop/

I've tried Ximian Desktop in SuSE 8.2 Pro and it's pretty sweet. Great integration with Windows machines and Nautilus.

Just forget about Linspire... if anything, they offer way less than many distributions around and it's quite pricey... even Sun JDS is a much better investment (I've tried JDS and it's neat).

Good luck!

yea, but it would be worth it to him because he doesn't want to have to switch away from netzero if possible. Plus, all those things require the command line, something my grandpa refuses to do. He wants something strictly gui if possible.

kde needs no commandline.

tried yoper?

shouldnt the built-in network connection thing work? its just a number and username and password, right?