Cant get internet to work with any distro.
 

I'm at my wits end. Ive gone through 5 distros and non of them connect to my internet. I keep going back to my windows partition to try a new one each time but never get any closer. I'm trying to use linux because I use them at work but this is after everything has been installed and such. I never do anything more complicated then file and user managment.

So I just tried to install debian using the network installer but it couldnt configure the dhcp. So I manually input the ip information and continued the install hoping that was enough. After wiping out the previous linux distro I wasnt able to complete the install because it wasnt able to connect to a mirror. I went to the console and tried wget on google but it said it was a bad host or whatever (it was a properly formed http url though). So now I'm grubless and found an old version of ubuntu 9 so I can use grub to get back into windows.

But while I'm in ubuntu 9 I should be able to setup my internet right? If I can do it in ubuntu with your help I may be able to see what I'm doing wrong and not have this problem anymore?

Looking for a little direction. I have no idea what I'm doing.

Are you using wired or wireless network?
Do you know what network card?

I have both wired and wireless available and connected. An ifconfig shows lo and pan01

I don't know my network card

Try

Ethernet Controller: Intel Corporation Device 1503 (rev 05)
Network Controller: RaLink Device 3090

These look relavent.

What distros have you looked at ?
you are aware that that is very OLD
the current is Ubuntu 12.10

a old and unsupported os will not be able to use new hardware

also those " netinstall" 100 meg images work best if you have a cable connection
dial up or dsl will be a problem

the current Mint 14
http://linuxfreedom.com/linuxmint/li...-dvd-32bit.iso

--- cinnamon desktop
linuxmint-14.1-cinnamon-dvd-32bit.iso


---------- KDE desktop -------------
-- 32 bit
linuxmint-14-kde-dvd-32bit.iso
--64 bit
linuxmint-14-kde-dvd-64bit.iso



or the current fuduntu release
http://www.fuduntu.org/get.php
"Fuduntu-2013.1-i686-LiveDVD.iso"
or
"Fuduntu-2013.1-x86_64-LiveDVD.iso"

I'm directly connected to the modem through an ethernet cable and it doesn't get past dhcp on the debian net install. What should I do?

If it's not installed by default
Intel e1000
http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=257676
http://sourceforge.net/projects/e100...stable/1.2.20/
In debian I believe that you can install during installation if you choose "Advanced OPtions>>Epert Mode" at boot menu