Well i got linux running yesterday. I got my pppoe conected. But I find that the DNS of my pppoe connection takes over my standard LAN DNS. I checked resolv.conf and the DNS is of my ISP. (Well actually I dont dial a DNS in pppoe but a SERVICENAME which establishes a connection to this DNS) So I cannot use my DC client ie Valknut to connect to LAN hubs. I even configured the valknut to use eth0 which has my DNS configured at 172.19.4.56 that is a common DNS for all who connect to local hubs (DC) in our area. SO how do I get it working? The error Valknut gives is :Cannot route to host.
Also I have found that my speakers run fine but my mic cannot be used till now. I tried selecting the mic as record source and even unmuted it but i cannot hear any sound on speaker nor on a recording app like krec (gnome recorder crashes). Any fixes to this problem?
And yaa I have a Realtek AC 97 sound card on board but it is detected as an SiS 70xx with AC 97 (i guess that shouldnt be the problem).

AC97 has all kinds of problems in linux. I gave up on trying to make mine work after wasting a lot of time. Try getting another PCI card.. search internet for supported cards.