I have a installed SimplyMEPIS 6.0.1 on my Dell Inspiron B130 laptop on dual-boot basis with Windows XP SP2.
My laptop has a Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller Network adapters and a Conexant HDA D110 MDC V.92 internal modem.
I am not able to connect to the internet using SimplyMEMPIS.
My difficulties are:-
1. I am not able to find out if the network adapter has been detected by the OS. In windows we could do it from the Device Manager, what is the equivalent program in Linux from where I can find out about all the hardware of my system?
2. I do not know if the internal modem has been detected. Same difficulty as above. I've read that Conexant HCF and HSF modems are not compatible with Linux. since mine is a HDA modem, do I have the same problem?
3. I tried to fill in the IP address as is available to me in the System Administration. The screenshot is below. What is the meaning of 'Broadcast Address'. It wasn't there in windows and I do not have it. Is this why I cannot log onto the Internet. How can I resolve the problem?
Please give the solution without the technical jargon as this is the first time I am using Linux AND I do not have a technical background:-)

I'm don't know about SimplyMEPIS 6.0.1. In Fedora or Red Hat your can try lspci as root. It should list all your PCI device on your machine. If your ethernet card is listed. Do service network status/stop/start . If your network is up try ifconfig or ip addr . If all these steps return good result. Most likely your DNS is not setup right. So, check your /etc/resolv.conf file.

How doyou intend to connect to the internet?
via a dialup link using the conexant hda modem or an ethernet connection either to a external broadband modem using ethernet, or via ethernet to local network with it's own connection or is the conexant modem a broadband one?

The ethernet settings will have no effect if using dialup.

great questions kwill. I shouldn't just assume he connecting to the internet via ethernet with broadband.

Go to linuxant to get drivers for your distribution (modem), click on the drivers tab after soaking up the gobble, there are also installation instructions on the driver pages. Only 32bit support.

The keywords above that I put in the google search field produced allot of links with all the right information to get the ethernet happening. Check this one out in particular.

Mepis has some really good built-in gui tools for network configuration. If you can post the output of
as well as
that will help.
You might check this
as well.
There really was a huge improvement from 6.0 to 6.5 in Mepis, and the beta for 7.0 is available, too. You might consider installing a newer version. It is my understanding that 7.0 (using the 2.6.22? kernel?) may resolve some previously unsupported hardware issues.
Post back and let us know how it goes.