Hello. I'm very new at this. I'm in the process of switching from windows to Linux. I've installed the Fedora core [a la Rickford Grant - Linux for non-geeks -] on a second hard drive with a dual boot. However, I'm not yet online with Linux. The modem in my computer is a Lucent Winmodem. I understand that it will, most likely, not work in Linux. So, question number one is, [1] "which external modems have you found to be really good with Linux?" When talking to the repair guy at the computer store about installing 2 or more serial ports he told me all the cards they had would not work with Linux, that they would only work with windows. Which is the second question. [2] "Which serial cards/ports work well with Linux?" I see the penguin on a lot of things but how do they really work? Thanks ahead of time for any useful information. Howard V

Do you not have serial on the motherboard? I have no idea what serial cards work with Linux, but the HCL link at the top of this page can probably help.

As for external modems -- Any serial modem should work fine. I've got a creative modem blaster, but only because it's the only one BestBuy had when lightning got my cheapie.

Most RS-232/parallel cards will work on Linux as they're "standard" hardware like the integrated serial/parallel ports. You can try googling for the card make/model and/or the chipset model for information on linux compatibility.

www.linmodems.org lists winmodems that have linux drivers.

As far as I know almost all external RS-232 modems work under Linux (I havn't seen one that doesn't yet) and are readily supported - you only need to configure them from KPPP or whichever interface/frontend you prefer. It's the USB modems you have to be careful about as these are almost all "winmodems" too.

Hope this helps!