"does any one know what the default enviorment is?"
KDE
"and what the "little plug in the corner of the screen" is?"
Possibly an icon to start wvdial in a teminal. Have him right click on "little plug in the corner of the screen". Then click on "Properties". Then click on "Application". The resulting screen will tell him what command he is running.
"He is getting kicked off after 7 mins of inactivity. I do not know where to begin in Suse to look for the timeout settings"
If he is using wvdial then the timeout setting is in /etc/wvdial.conf. Setting:
Idle Seconds = 0
in /etc/wvdial.conf will turn off the timeout feature. Here is a wvdial readme in case you have to debug /etc/wvdial.conf further:
http://www.linuxmanpages.com/man5/wvdial.conf.5.php
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Steve Stites