I decided to try Linux the other day, been staring at a set of RH8 cd's for over a year.

Well after a day of farting around i've managed to get my Laptop hooked up with it's bloody WinModem and installed some programs..

My next hurdle is this...

I want to be able to share my dial up connection between my Laptop and Desktop with an ethernet cable. Lap running Linux and Desk running XP.

For now I really don't care which OS connects to the net, whichever is simpler for starters I guess.

Ohh, and the Ethernet cable is a "null" type cable I made up, works perfectly between the 2 running XP.

Thanks for any help.

Welcome to LQ.

It will probably be easier if you use the fixed computer for the net connection but it would be more secure with linux.

Set your computers up with private addresses (you may not need to if you have set this up correctly with windows):
Desktop
IP: 192.168.1.1
MASK: 255.255.255.0

Laptop (run "netconfig")
IP: 192.168.1.2
MASK: 255.255.255.0
Gateway: 192.168.1.1
DNS: 192.168.1.1

Then enable Internet connection sharing on XP and restart networking on linux:
service network restart

You're da man!!...

Took a little fudging, Linux was the easy part to my suprise...
Seems default for XP is 192.168.0.1. I forced it to 192.168.1.1 and it disabled sharing.. Re-enabled it and all was good.

Thanks, that was a hell of a lot less painful that getting that ltmodem running, last time I saw a unix command line was over 15 years ago in grade school.

Crap... Just installed a dual boot on the desktop.. Uses an HSF modem and they want 14.99 for the drivers.... Thats as much as I paid for the "now" useless modem. I have at least 5 WinModems in various pc's and closets around the house.. Should have bought 1 real old school serial modem years ago... who knew

How do I share net from linux to linux?? I imagine netconfig with the proper #'s on both sides of the sharing eth interfaces but how do I enable sharing on Linux?

Sorry to bother you with such an easy question but you cut through all the crap with your first answer, it's a little daunting for a newb to sift through the HowTo's when you barely know your way around the shell.

Thanks again for your help, I promise I will read more HowTo's in the future, I have a DVB card in my main box that will take my learning curve into orbit.

Thanks again, I'm hooked on this Linux thing..