Hi.
I am fairly new to the Linux OS, even though I've been using it since Red Hat 8.0 up to Fedora 2.
Now I have decided to venture into the SuSE field just out of curiosity.
I installed SuSE personal 9.1, everything went smoothly with only one bump, my modem was not recognized. I even installed the OS again being careful not to omit any step, and again my modem didn't appear in the list of hardware...
Anyways, I decided to continue the installation process expecting to install and configure it after the installation was over.
My modem is a US Robotic,controller model USR5610B (usr.com/support/product-template.asp?prod=5610b) and I installed the drivers from the rpm file provided by the company, then I checked the “Device Manager” and it appears under the “Unknown devices” list.
My modem has worked right “out of the box” on Fedora, Mandrake even Lindows Live 4.x... and I don't understand why it doesn't do it under SuSE.
ANOTHER PROBLEM:
Every time I try to connect to the internet using kinternet I get this message:
“Connection to remote server refused. Maybe smppd is not running. Also check the server settings in the dialog “Various Settings””
The OS is installed in my computer as a standalone machine.
I tried to configure the “ server settings' and nothing happened.
I have tried to connect via Dial-up to Netzero, which is in the list of accepted ISPs, and also Metconnect which is an ISP local provider (New York City) wich I know works with Linux, because I use its service on the Fedora side, and I'm using it at this right moment.
I even replaced the modem by a controllerless conexant which was recognized inmediatelly and appeared on the hardware list.
What am I doing wrong?...I suspect it's not my modem, but something that I must configure

are you configuring it in YAST under "network devices"? thats where i had to configure mine.

it sounds like your not using a serial modem since you need a driver. i've used suse 9 for a long time but i use a serial modem on my desktop and an internal conexant modem on my laptop. the conexant needed a driver and of course my serial modem doesn't. one thing i had to do for both systems was open yast2, go to network devices and click on the modem icon. after i entered all the isp info everything was cool. kinternet should work after that. if you did that already then there might have been a problem when you installed the driver. was the rpm for suse 9.1? did they give you a choice between an rpm and a tar.gz? if they did, use the tar.gz and follow the instructions exactly. hope that helps some.

I have my modem now configured under Yast and everything
looks to be fine, but now when I try to connect to the internet it
doesn't do anything.
I tried reading the connection log to see what is going wrong
and it says:
SuSE meta pppd (smpppd.ifcfg) version 1.16 on linux
Status is:disconnected
trying to connect to smpppd.ifcfg
Connect to smpppd.ifcfg
Status is:disconnected
Status is: connecting
Status is:disconnected
pppd(0) diedppd options error(exit code 2)

By the way even though my modem doesn't appears when trying
to detect it by Yast, Yast tells me to configure it anyways which I
did (of course).
What can I do now????

WHERE IS GNOME???
I tend to prefer Gnome over KDE, nevertheless KDE is the
default graphical enviroment on SuSE..and purposelly they
look to make it hard to find under SuSE....Where can I find it?