I suppose software is a good place for this one...basically, I recently moved to the boonies and my only internet option is dial-up for now. (btw, this is being typed on a windows box ) basically, what dial-up provider has the best software for linux? Netzero claims support for lindows...is that software a generic rpm that'll work on many distro's..? I have no intention on switching to linspire stuff to get dial-up internet working. Any help would be appreciated...thanks everyone.

i'm on dial-up, using suse and slackware..setting up the connection was no different really than setting up the connection in windows...the one snag you might find is the modem...linux doesn't do well with winmodems...you can find drivers for them sometimes...but an external serial modem is what i use, works great, right out of the box, no drivers to worry about...and actually connects at better speeds than my windows box does...

I also live in a rural area, and had dial up service from different providers, and all of the providers were o k but the phone lines where I live were in poor shape. I use mandrake 9.1 and had no trouble configuring the setup. But as the previous person said , get an external modem, you'll save yourself hours of pain and heart ache. Get a serial port modem. The one I was using was an Actiontec that I bought for $39.00. Also the last provider that I used was PeoplePC for $9.95 a month, the others were local providers and were just as good or just as bad, depending on the weather. (I mean that literally,every time it rained, my phone line had noise and my connection was lousy) I hope some of this is useful info. BTW I finally got cable internet from the local T V cable provider, now I'm spoiled.

wow, more than just Me who lives in a Rural area, and is stuck on Dial-up.

As they said, all you have todo is set up the connection.
With ISP's like Netzero (well, you said they had a Linux version of their stupid dialer) or others like them (whatever Juno became...and AOL), it might be a pain to get it to work, as if they didn't have a Linux dialer, you would be stuck using Crossover or WINE trying to get the windows program to work, and I doubt it would even then.

If you just choose a local ISP, you can save yourself some hassle, and some ads, and just use a program like KPPP (if you you KDE) to configure and connect to the internet.

And I can't reideriate this ENOUGH!!.
My laptop had a crappy softmodem...and I was using the Smart Link drivers (which oddly enough came with SuSE personal...before I switched to Mandrake 10.1), and those worked fine...so if you are stuck with a WinModem (www.linmodem.org) there are options toget it to work....

But I would def. recommend a real modem... Any serial modem should work, and if you're like me and have a laptop with no serial port, just about any PCMCIA modem card should work fine too (don't be scared too.. Mandrake told me it didn't support my modem, and it work's just fine).