"I won't work because I need you to install be brother, my sister, my mom, my dad, my grandmom and my teacher. They will be found on different sites. If u have net, I'll get them myself. If not, go get them before they update themselves or u will need to get my update too."

"Almost forgot. You will need fast internet too. Then u can either: get my family and I on DVD online; get my family and whoever they need before u get tired of thinking about me; find out I might work better on another version of linux, which u also need to download; ..."

"There's so much u can learn about me. There's no hustle, cuz I'm free. You just have to download my cousins and their relatives and maybe their friends, if u want to try this really interesting feature I have to offer."

"... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ..."

It sounds like the one thing you need to learn is how to install software and maintenance without an Internet connection. You're correct that all existing operating systems (Windows, Mac OSX and Linux) assume by default that a network connection is available for maintenance. However, it is easy to configure Linux to accept its software and maintenance from local copies (however you obtained them).

But if you don't have an Internet connection, how are you posting?

with most communaty distros that can be the case allthough once you have installed the base system from a DVDF there is actulally littl need to kepep it up to date if you are not connected to the internet.

if you cant download the DVD then why not purchace a DVD form the distro of your choice, they are relativly cheap (somtimes even free) and they let you support the project

Linux is, though you might not know it, used pretty widely in embedded systems and places where there will never be an internet connection. And it works all right. It's true if you pick up a cool desktop distribution and want to always have the most new, bleeding edge everything in it, you're going to need an internet connection to make it easy, and preferrably a fast one to keep you sane. But consider this: big tractor (yes, the vehicle with two big and two smaller tires, or more, that rolls behind the haybarn doing land stuff) manufacturers, for example, use Linux as the operating system in the computers built into their (modern) tractors. You weren't necessarily aware that tractors use computers, but you probably know that cars have nice computers (sometimes with flat screens etc.), so it's really no wonder that tractors use them too. Tractors are actually just one example, and not necessarily even big one, but I wanted to bring this on to wake you up. Anyway, those things may have a Linux operating system inside, and surely no (or close to no) tractor uses internet connection; even if it did, it wouldn't probably upgrade the operating system trough it (not nowadays). And it works all right.

Now that you know that such "primitive" vehicles such as tractors use computers, and that they may have Linux operating systems inside, you may start thinking "wow..actually, now that I think about it, there are loads of things with Linux inside!" And many of those things do not use internet as you do. Desktop users like you are just a small portion of Linux users, and internet is just something that's convenient to you, something that makes life easier (and more bleeding edge).

If you updated Windows trough Microsoft Windows Update, you noticed that you'll be downloading big packages (150MB+) every now and then, and smaller ones even more often. Windows needs and uses internet just as Linux does. It's just up to you yourself how much you want to upgrade from the net; nobody forces you to download anything from the web. It's just convenient that you can download a huge install DVD with "everything" inside: Windows users would too, but they aren't allowed. If you want, you can buy/order your Linux CD/DVD without any internet connectivity, never plug the machine onto a network and still use it quite happily. It is simply you who wants to use the internet - and you just want to do it a lot.

another thing that uses linux that you may not know (though its a little more techy than a tractor )
is TVO boxes!

You haven't driven a tractor lately!

Also many updates for established stable distros are mainly networking security updates. Not connected to the net, what do you need the networking security updates for?

If you are running something like Debian Sid, then yes, you NEED a fast net connection and download 20 - 250 mb a day, Running debian etch or ubuntu, grab the DVDs and use them as the install medium. OK, as said before, you won't be using cutting edge alpha or beta versions of software, but if you want a stable system, this is not to be recommended.

ask yourself, what do you want of a computer system.

Choose the right distribution and you do not need to bother much about the net. The full openSUSE, Debian and Mandriva discs tend to have quite a lot of packages and the systems can be configured to handle all package management from discs instead of the net.

I didn't have internet for a very long time when I first started learning Linux. This also means that my Windows boxen didn't have a network conenction either. And hehehe they need updates more than my *nix boxes do ;]

Actually thats when I learned networking, and had fun with building routers, firewalls, web servers etc. There are many many people in this world who do not have "the net" and that use Linux on a daily basis.

I won't run this thread starter down, because he/she is right to a certain degree.
Take Fedora for example, all you see on their web page is allot of hype and links to download it, you download a DVD and install the Operating system as per instructions (found on-line, but usually not where you get the DVD, got to spend time surfing for that). Then you try to connect to the WWW and find that it does not connect, so you spend all kinds of time running around the WWW with another computer or operating system looking for answers as to why you can't link to the WWW. Then you find you need to compile drivers and need to install kernel source, but you can't install dick squat with Fedora's package manager unless you have an internet connection. So here you are booting down and booting up another to surf for answers again to figure out how to get it all together.
Eventually after the roller coaster ride booting up/down two operating systems on a dual boot, you got Fedora on-line with your modem.
God forbid you should check for updates, because Fedora does not give any sort of indication as to how long it will take. Finally after 45 minutes of downloading repository data, it shows you a long list of packages it needs to download, some packages it needs to install to support the updates are on the DVD but it will not be kind enough to install them from there. And because normally you would have Windows XP's 90+ updates half done by now after a fresh install, you're shaking your head looking at this long list, and it's been a day or two since you first put the DVD in the drive and booted from it. So you hit "Apply", and after an hour you notice a little slice of the progress bar shows up. Might as well go fix some fence or weed the garden, clean out the garage, and re-paint the house because you won't be surfing for a day or two with either of your operating systems because Fedora is updating and the progress bar moves a millimeter an hour.

Unfortunately, these are some of the compromises one must accept when getting something for free, when you pay $700.00 US for Windows Vista Ultimate you will more than likely be on-line shortly after you pull the DVD out of the drive because part of the money goes to the manufacturer of your modem or wireless device, ethernet. But because you pay nothing for Linux, the modem manufacturer is not going to go out of there way to include drivers with every new distribution that comes out, for Fedora....that's every seven months or so. The gap between the release of Windows XP and Vista was somewhere around 6 years, new hardware drivers were included in updates or came on the disk with the hardware you paid money for.

Installing packages with Fedora from a local repository (e.g., a DVD) is trivially simple. When installing a new release (of any distribution), I usually wait 2-3 months, then rsync all updates down and burn them to a DVD. This lets me install multiple machines and apply all maintenance to bring it to current - without the need for a network connect (no catch-22).

Learning to do that is just one of the things you gain with experience. It's the same with Windows; it's how you avoid opening yourself to exploits before you get to apply maintenance. It's a technique everyone should use, but like I said, it's something you learn with experience.

You can, kernel sources are included on disk 1 in the RPMS directory. Mount the cd, change to the mount point/Fedora/RPMS and yum localinstall kernel-devel whatever you need here.

I agree though that yum until FC7 was paaaaaainfully slow.

This however is a moot point to the OP's original statement. Point in case is this though, if it is a desktop system whether MS or Linux, most users want the internet and I don't find one to suffer more or less without a public network connection, this of course is imho.

Look guys
You're forgetting what it's like to be a newbie to Linux, you may think it's trivially simple, but you have Linux experience. Put yourself in a newbie's boots from a Windows world. You will not find it trivially simple without many hours of googling, and even that does not make it simple. There's nothing cut and dry about command line when all you know is "a couple clicks of the mouse". One slip of the command and you're shutting down the OS and re-booting another to go on-line to figure out what was not thoroughly explained, not all Linux tutorials are written by/for newbies, there is allot of Linux experience assumptions in 90% of all Linux tutorials.

Do you actually think I don't know this? I've been through two Fedora distributions, coming from a Mandrake and Debian world, you still have to google to find out that Fedora does not use kernel-headers but rather kernel-devel to compile your modem drivers. This is not written in the installation instructions.

BTW:
I removed Fedora 7 last week because of the same issue as the thread starter, "I don't have a fast connection". I normally would apply updates on Fedora once a week as I have a slow connection. It sometimes needs 24 hours to download a week's worth of updates, that's ridiculous. The thread starter hit the nail on the head when he/she says Linux system designers design it with the assumption everybody has a fast connection. I don't have a fast connection, therefore I don't do the blue balloons. Debian testing is similar, but only needs an average of half an hour a week to do updates. Mostly because they give you the option to install a base system with only the features you want/need, not installing laptop battery monitors and the likes on your desktop like Fedora, then you have to download updates for these packages you don't need in your system yet can't remove them. There are some very poor distributions, and reddazz is partially correct to say "choose the right distribution", that's easier said than done, you have to try a few first before you can figure out which is the right one.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I bought a copy of a RH 6.0 CD from a bloke at a computer market (in 1999) for $20. After installing and experimenting with it a bit, I found the plentiful documentation which comes with pretty much every Linux distro these days (under /usr/doc or /usr/share/doc) and set myself to the task of reading.

There was one document in particular which I found extremely helpful. That was the "From DOS/Windows to Linux HOWTO" by Guido Gonzato. An online copy can be found here: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/DOS-Win-to-Linux-HOWTO.html.

This is what started the ball rolling for me. I wasn't even connected to the internet at that stage.

Anecdotal as it may be, I think this proves that you don't need online access to install and configure Linux.

Of course, internet access does help if you want extra features which aren't included in your distro, but using Linux is not impossible without it.

[aside] Has anyone tried installing XP lately? I recently had occasion to do so on one of the boxes here at work, and found that it came with NONE of the drivers needed for the hardware it was installed on. And this particular hardware is almost 3 years old! Compare that to a modern Linux distro which has all your devices working right out of the box... [/aside]