yup
 

i hav used it to create a lan connection using DHCP and static, because im not sure what does what. when im using static i use the settings windows uses, and dhcp is automatic. when i connect 'lan' it comes up as connecting to internet at the bottem of the dialouge, so i assume it means that my router has been recognised, it comes up as 'connected' then 'not connected' which i can only guess means that it can connect to the router, but not the internet itself, muffin

oops
 

i was using static when that happens by the way... sorry

Ok, I have been watching and waiting. I am not sure that your sure what your doing. If you followed darins post then there is no way that it couldn't work with most linux distros.

Now with that being said. Setup for DHCP. After you do that run ifconfig -a and post the output. We need to make sure that you are even getting an ip address from your Router. Also if you could give the make and model of your router it would be nice. If this is just an DSL modem then its only going to alow once connection and it will bind it self to that mac address from your windows box. Most of the time you can just turn off the modem and turn it back on with the linux box set for dhcp. Then open a browser and go your your modem setup page. I am not familler with mandrake but you have to have a reslove.conf file somewhere to have the dns settings.

You can manually setup a DNS recoerd or you could send your self through a proxy server to by pass this for the time being.

Have you tried to ping 10.0.2.1 from your windows box? See if you can get a reply. Ifso do the same with the linux box soon as you get an IP address.

Also can you make sure that your eth0 is even setup?

This all may sound stupid, but your computer should be working. Alot of people have problems with getting on the internet when new to linux, but thats what the internet runs on so don't give up on linux.

Here is my ifconfig -a from my fedora box

[root@gmbackupsvr ~]# ifconfig -a
eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:E0:4C:39:0F:78
inet addr:10.0.2.22 Bcast:10.0.2.255 Mask:255.255.255.0
inet6 addr: fe80::2e0:4cff:fe39:f78/64 Scope:Link
UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1
RX packets:4597255 errors:6 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4040232 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:1 carrier:0
collisions:200015 txqueuelen:1000
RX bytes:3200930226 (2.9 GiB) TX bytes:2351835959 (2.1 GiB)
Interrupt:11 Base address:0xec00

lo Link encap:Local Loopback
inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0
inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host
UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1
RX packets:4079912 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
TX packets:4079912 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
collisions:0 txqueuelen:0
RX bytes:1087474314 (1.0 GiB) TX bytes:1087474314 (1.0 GiB)

sit0 Link encap:IPv6-in-IPv4
NOARP MTU:1480 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:0
RX bytes:0 (0.0 b) TX bytes:0 (0.0 b)