I have a HP Pavilion ZE4200 laptop that i have tried several different distro's on trying to find the best one with the best hardware support. Each one that i have tried runs flawlessly on this machine. ( Xandros, Simply Mepis, Linspire, Ubuntu,). With each one i cannot get my modem to work.(Conexant 56K AClink modem)
My most recent, and the one i like best is SUSE Linux 10.0 but my modem will not work with it either. I have messed around with linus for about 6 monthes so there is alot that i do not know. Can anyone help with obtaining and installing drivers for this?

Conexant modems generally use proprietary conexant drivers, available from conexant.
(You have to pay for the latest version, but there are older versions still around for free.)

I have a suspicion that it may even work with the smartlink driver + alsa.

It is frustrating to install OS after OS in the hope that just one will run your hardware - then to find that none of them would will... not out of the box. (Modems are an old bugbear.)

Usually it is best to google around the topic... enter your hardware as listed by lspci along with "linux" and you will find loads of discussions.

For modems, the one-stop shop is the linmodem project. Use the "scanmodem" script to discover what is known about your modem and where to look for support. It will over-inform you but you will learn loads.



Once you are done, would you enter your laptop in the HCL please?