I'm running a dual boot machine, SuSE 8.2, and WinXP.

I use Telus (I live in canada) ADSL, a Linksys etherfast router, and an external Linksys DSL modem.
I have an Intel PRO 100+ ethernet card (not sure if that's what ya call them...) running to the router.

I downloaded SuSE, since I'm too stupid/cheap to buy it. I downloaded the most minimal install I could get (just enough for X), and I got lynx on there.

Here's the trouble: I started up lynx, tried going to http://www.google.com, and... nothing. I wasn't connected to the internet. I looked around YaST, but have no clue how to set it up (I don't even know what DHCP is, and have a vague idea of how IPs work, so I didn't really know what was going on).

I played around with it for a while, skipped all the stuff I don't understand, hit finish, and it said it needed to install a package... smpppd I think it was.

The problem of course, is that I'm not connected to the internet, so I can't get the package... I've got all the boot disks, and I'm guessing it's on there somewhere, but I don't want to screw up linux... again (I've messed up 3 installs of 2 different distros )

could someone help me out? I know windows, but this linux, it confoozes me...

If you have already tried to configured your modem (sounds like you did), then use the YaST menu to undo all changes you made. Choose Network card configuration; if your ethernet card is detected, configure it as eth0.
Next time you login to X, I think you will be able to get online - just open a web browser.
I run SuSE 8.0, Linksys 10/100 ethernet, westell wirespeed dsl modem. SuSE detected my modem & ethernet card. All I had to do was configure my ethernet card as eth0 (i.e., simply click a few buttons) and not worry about modem configuration. That got me online when I logged in to X, been online since....obviously, hell, I'm here now.

it worked! Thanks for the help