Hello, I am retired my job in Arizona and am now living in the Philippines. I have decided to leave Windows and go over to Linux. I have installed Fedora 5 and really like it. I also installed Echolink under Wine and that is working well. I did not expect a problem using any of the Linux email packages. ButI canot seem to find what the various programs expect for the URL. My mail address is a Hotmail Address. Outlook and MSN Mail seemed to find the needed URL automatically. I am on a direct cable internet connection.

Gaim will check my mail and let me answer it under MSN Mail but that is awkward and one cannot use any formatting. I have tried the MS Exchange, copied the URL from MSN etc. all to no avail. I know theprograms want a URL in a certain format but don't know what that should be. What had seemed a simple problem has become very frustrating.

Thanks for any help offered.

Congratulations on 1. retiring, and 2. on leaving windows. Done both myself, and never looked back. However,I still live in a cold part of the world...

Anyway, to try and answer your question. I'm a little confused as to what the issue is. As I see it, you have trouble with the format of how to type a URL? In a web browser it is in the format of :

host.atwhatever.typeoforg Seems simple enough, so I'm also guessing that is not your question. The thing to understand is that is resolved to an IP address by DNS servers, or by a local file called 'hosts'. Have you got DNS configured on your system? Take a look at your /etc/resolv.conf file. This is where you put the ip addresses of the name servers your ISP provides. They will look like:

nameserver 206.47.244.52
nameserver 206.47.244.108

This is a plain text file you edit as root.

You are also talking about e-mail. Does your ISP not provide e-mail services? I know a lot of people use hotmail, or some other free e-mail provider. Not sure why, other that that is what they learned first. I would recommend you install a program like Evolution and configure it to use the e-mail service of your ISP. It is a bit of a pain to let your friends and family know about the new address, but once done it works well.

If I have failed to answer your questions, see if you can clarify just what the issue is. More than happy to help.

I answered your reply to my question but it doesn't seem to have registered so will try again.

I don't think the problem is with my local IP addresses. It is a cable router and the data is stored there to be downloaded at each startup. If Linux did not have the data then it seems that Gaim(Buddy Messenger) would not be able to automatically obtain my mail and allow me to answer it. But this is an awkward email method and doesn't allow for any formatting of my mail.

I don't use my local ISP for email because I move around a lot. By using a Hotmail address I can obtain my mail even if I am not on my home computer (connected to my local ISP). If in a different city I can always stop by an internet cafe and bring up my mail. Also my email address is used as and ID for web pages and connections.

There is probably a simple explanation for this problem but old ageis preventing me from seeing it.

I hope I have explained the problem better this time. If it is cold there in Toronto I seem to have a good supply of hot air that I could send your way. haha

Thanks,
Cliff

O.K. I understand you are using Hotmail as your mail provider since you move around a lot. You do not want to use Gaim, although that does work, but does not allow you the ability to format mail messages.

What linux mail programs have you tried?

I suspect I am not the best one to try and help you out, since I do not use a web based mail provider. I can access my mail (from my ISP) through web access using a web browser.

Here is a possible solution for you. I did some looking around, and found the following:

"you can get thunderbird, mozilla and evolution in fact any pop3 email client to send and recieve through hotmail,

ensure you have contrib and plf on software manager and then install hotwayd and hotwayd smtp, then when setting up your account you use your email address when it asks for usernasme and log on name, and the pop and smtp adresses are both 127.0.0.1 (110 for pop and 2500 for smtp)"

I have not tried this myself, but from what I have read, it loks like you can get Evolution to retrieve your Hotmail. I use evolution, it has lots of nice features, and gives some nice editing tools. Hope this helps.

Sorry for the delay in my answer. I have been out of town. I will try the above. Thanks

Cliff