i reciently installed linux mandrake 7.1 after i got pissed off at windows(crashed shutting down). anyway i was trying to setup my cable internet and i got confused entering all the numbers. also i need to find drivers for my netgear card. is there an easier war to configure the internet? and where can i get drivers for net card?

also what is the diffrence between eth1, eth0, etc?

Second question first - you are allowed to have more than one ethernet adapter in Linux, so eth0 is the first adapter, eth1 is the second, etc.

Most cable providers are set up for you to use DHCP. There are multiple threads here already addressing setting up DHCP.

Then you can verify the setup by typing ifconfig eth0, then ping something (like yourself first, then here).

The 'drivers' that you talk about are implemented as code in the kernel. You will need to recompile your kernel to include the code or load the modules if there are there already. Have a look at http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...?threadid=2458 which is a thread about a netgear card. You will probably also want to read the following howtos:
http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Kernel-HOWTO.html
http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Ethernet-HOWTO.html
http://linuxdocs.org/HOWTOs/Net-HOWTO/index.html

This might be quite a steep learning curve for you if this is your first attempt at networking, but you'll only need to climb it once!

Have a look through them, and post some specific questions...

Good luck!

Jamie...