I'm sorry to say, but I'm quite the Linux Newb. I've successfully and easily installed Ubuntu Dapper Drake along with my Windows XP OS, and now I have a dual-boot system.

My hardware is a Toshiba Satellite A60 Laptop, with an additional gigabyte RAM on top of the default 192MBs. I have, and use my wireless option whenever I'm near a router. It works well that way in both Windows and Ubuntu.

When I'm not near an access point, I have to resort to using Windows so that I can use dialup to get online.

I stupidly didn't record where I read this, several months ago, but someone said that my computer's modem isn't compatible with Linux.

When I try to configure PPP, I enter the phone number (which I looked in the AOL software in Windows to find), my username, and my password, and then I move on to the hardware stuff, and it isn't able to auto-detect my modem.

I'll do my best to answer any and all questions on top of what I've already mentioned, and I'd really appreciate any help I can get on this topic!

Welcome to the winmodem troubled people. Start trying to answer yourself here: http://linmodems.org/ and if you can't with that, come back and surely much people will do their best. Good luck.