I think after some weeks and 10-ish distros I have decided to start with Xandros and work my way up. However one problem which has plagued this and most other distros for me is my usb cable modem ( only slax and mepis configured it from the start ).
Anyway this time the problem is even more confusing. When I boot into xandros ( 2.0 business ), the modem isn't recognised, in fact it doesn't even recognise that a device is connected via USB. My Canon printer is detected though, also connected via USB. But it does detect the modem for a few secs at start of boot as the USB light comes on on the modem.
That is the usual problem that I have with the modem. However I tried using the 'Configure (Expert)' boot mode just to try something different. Surprisingly the modem was recognised and I configured it to use DHCP and the connection (eth2) was 'UP' (had to modprobe usbnet to get it working), when I used ifconfig but still wasn't able to connect to the net. I even tried using the static ip config but still unable to connect.
So my question is, why doesn't the normal boot-up detect my Ambit cable modem but the config boot mode does?
BTW during normal boot I noticed a small error about not being able to 'sychronise root hub...' relating to the cable modem.

Any ideas?