I have been trying to figure out how to load drivers for several hours and since I am quite literally a noob (first day), everything I read just goes right over my head. I hope someone will have the patience to walk me through what to do.

I am using Mint 17.2 KDE 32-bit on a Dell Dimension 3000 with 1.25 GB of RAM installed.

Here is what I have managed to find but I don't know how and where to put it all together. I found the driver and unzipped it to the same folder but any further instructions I have found are just gibberish to me.
The dolphin window on the left shows the tar file and the contents, e100-3.5.17
Middle dolphin window shows contents of e100 folder including another folder named src
The dolphin window on the right shows contents of src folder.
The terminal window shows just how clueless I really am.
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...ps3ds2vmew.jpg

I tried to follow the "before you ask, read this" instructions but it isn't clear to me how to do that.
http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/t...ps930bervb.jpg

I would sure appreciate any guidance.

You need to first identify the chipset on your ethernet adapter. Open a terminal and run:

$ lspci | grep net

If that doesn't give any output, just run:

$ lspci

The lspci command will list everything on the pci bus. The first command I gave you should only give you entries from lspci's output that have "net" in them. Hopefully, that will list your ethernet adapter. Post the output of those commands here. If you're not sure how to do that, post back for further instructions. Once that's known, we can go from there to find the correct driver module. Also, state if you are using an ethernet dongle that plugs into a usb port. If that's the case, the above commands won't work.

Thank you for taking the time to answer!

$: command not found.
I guess $ is the same thing as sbin?

I have no idea how you made the vertical line in the first command between lspci and grep net.

lspci listed all components including ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82562EZ 10/100 Ethernet Controller (rev 02)

The Dimension 3000 is pretty ancient, I have one around here out of service. If I recall correctly, windows couldn't enable the built-in ethernet without installing the dell driver for it. I think I just used a PCI ethernet card that worked and turned off the motherboard ethernet in BIOS.

Thanks, Doug. It wouldn't surprise me if it didn't work however I found a file called Dell 3000 network driver.tar.gz
I just don't know what to do with it to try it out.

If it won't work, I may get a cheap wireless adapter so I can at least play around with Linux. This is all just for my own curiosity and education, it isn't critical by any means.

The e100 module should be included.

If the network adapter is not already configured then try loading the module manually. To check look at the output of the command ifconfig -a. Do you see anything for eth0? If not try the command

sudo modprobe e100

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Thanks, michaelk.

eth0
Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:xxxxxxxx
UP BROADCAST MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:0 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:0 (0.0 B) TX bytes:0 (0.0 B)

Its recognized but not being assigned an IP address. So how is the computer connected to the network?

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Ethernet wire is plugged in but nothing happens. I am typing on a different machine.

I forgot to ask if you had to run the modprobe command. Will also need to configure the module to be automatically loaded at boot time and maybe configure network manager to manage the network adapter.

I did run sudo modprobe e100 but there was no output. It asked for password, I typed it in and when I hit enter it went back to :~ >

I looked through Network Management Settings but I don't see anything I can really change.
I see two lists of "Connection Details"

"Available Details" and "Details to Show."


In Connection Editor, under "Wired Connection 1" it's set to Automatically connect when available. IPv4 set to automatic.

Hi...

Welcome to the forum

If you would, please post the entire results of...

Simply copy and paste the commands into your terminal and press "Enter." Do the same when posting the commands.

Thanks!

Just for the future, the "$" is not meant to be part of the command. It is usually the last character of your (non-root) command prompt, which might look like "user@pc:/current/path$". The command you were asked to type was just "lspci ..."

The "|" sign you reach on a UK keyboard by pressing the SHIFT and \ key. You will need it very often when you use a terminal.

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Oh my!!! OK, let's backup a minute. When you open a terminal, you will see a command prompt that will usually look like:

username@computer_name$

The user name and computer name will be the ones you chose at install. On non-ubuntu based distros you also have an admin account called "root" that you use for doing certain tasks that require elevated privileges beyond those of an ordinary user. The command prompt when using the root account looks something like this:

root@computer_name#

On ubuntu based distros like Mint, you don't have a root account. If you need elevated privileges to do certain administrative tasks you use the "sudo" command like so:

username@computer_name$ sudo <name of command>

When someone gives you a command to run on your terminal like:

$ lspci

You don't type in the "$"; you just type in the command at the command prompt. In the above case, you would type in just:

The "$" in front of the command is used to indicate that you don't need admin privileges to run the command.

The above is just for your personal edification so you have some idea of what's going on when people tell you type commands at a terminal. All that being said, if you follow ardvark71's instructions, that will give the info needed to further troubleshoot your problem.

One final note, you are running mint kde on some pretty low spec hardware. You will probably find that it runs pretty sluggishly. At some point, you may want to switch to a less resource intensive desktop environment for better performance. That's for another day. Try to get your ethernet adapter working first.

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The | symbol can also be found in the same location on US keyboards: (Shift)-\. That's a backslash, betweeen (Return) and (Backspace).

As for the $, I can see how this could be confused. If Kilgoretrout had used code tags and dropped that $, it probably would have been easier to figure out.

As for the ethernet, follow ardvark71's instructions and we will see if the driver is loaded. In general, in Linux, you should practically never need to download a separate driver file, because drivers come in the kernel. So your file is almost definitely unnecessary.

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