i tried to force 100baseTx-FD and the link went down, you can see with eth1 my switch can handle 100baseTx-FD, think i might just dump it and get an Airnet AES100 10/100Mbps PCI Ethernet PCI card - Realtek 8139D from ova nova, couple reviewers got it to work under ubuntu and fedora, thanks for looking

lspci
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Linksys NC100 Network Everywhere Fast Ethernet 10/100 (rev 11)

dmesg
eth0: Setting half-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 0021.
eth0: ADMtek Comet rev 17 at 0001d000, xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx, IRQ 11.
eth0: Setting half-duplex based on MII#1 link partner capability of 0021.
eth0: no IPv6 routers present

mii-tool -v
eth0: no autonegotiation, 10baseT-HD, link ok
product info: vendor 00:08:95, model 1 rev 0
basic mode: autonegotiation enabled
basic status: autonegotiation complete, link ok
capabilities: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
advertising: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
link partner: 10baseT-HD

eth1: negotiated 100baseTx-FD flow-control, link ok
product info: vendor 00:00:00, model 0 rev 0
basic mode: autonegotiation enabled
basic status: autonegotiation complete, link ok
capabilities: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD
advertising: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD flow-control
link partner: 100baseTx-FD 100baseTx-HD 10baseT-FD 10baseT-HD flow-control

found the cable modem manual, it only does 10baseT-HD

Just as a future reference for anyone who might find this post via search: hubs are half-duplex devices, so regardless of the speed you can never connect to a hub in full-duplex mode. Fortunately hubs (not switches) are pretty rare any more