What are the steps to access the Internet with Ubuntu?

[cousinlucky]

My suse 10 os is old and not supported any more. I only use my windows xp to write letters and the space in my computer is getting thin. I have a Ubuntu D5427 disk that I am going to install soon into my computer. The only worry I have is how to use Ubuntu to access the Internet.

I had to buy and use an external modem for suse. Does Ubuntu require an external modem?

Does Ubuntu have a special section for configuring a dial-up connection?

I know these are dumb questions. I admit to being quite Linux and computer illiterate.

[bigtomrodney]

Ubuntu 8.10 uses Network Manager 0.7 which is pretty cool. As long as your modem is generally supported (if SUSE did then Ubuntu very likely does too) configuring is quite easy. There is an icon in the system tray that you can right click on to configure your connection: number , username, password etc.

It also allows you to easily connect/disconnect from the internet with just one click and no prompt for your root password. Very slick altogether. The package manager is slightly different in how it is handled but it is in my opinion better all around mostly with thanks to the plentiful repositories which cooperate better than the stack of SUSE ones which I found used to conflict a good bit.

Now...all of that said, if you are using dialup Ubuntu might not be your favourite distro. It comes with a strong base system but is on only one CD. It relies heavily on you downloading anything else you want over the network. That may be a problem with dialup

[Pumalite]

OTOH; a router providing DHCP at boot is great and you have to configure the router and that's it.

[cousinlucky]

Thanks, Bigtomrodney!

Many people have said that I should have used Ubuntu as my first Linux distro.
I am not going to require a lot of bells and whistles from any distro. If not Ubuntu what would you suggest I put on my machine?

[D-cat]

The SuSE 11 DVD is pretty loaded, the only issue is when they say 256 MB RAM minimum 512+ recommended, they mean it.

Another option if you really want to go with Ubuntu, assuming you have high speed Internet access elsewhere, is to mirror the Ubuntu repositories on another disk (or on DVD's). Apt can be set up to take packages from disc instead of the Internet.

There are many other good distros, but not knowing how heavy they're packaged, I can't make any other recommendations. (What can I say, I found something that works, I stuck with it!)

[rokytnji]

What can I say, I found something that works, I stuck with it!

Thats why I use Puppy Dingo as one of my Operating systems. Puppy has always been known for good Dial up support and just works right out the box.

[hazel]

I am not going to require a lot of bells and whistles from any distro. If not Ubuntu what would you suggest I put on my machine?

If you're not after bells and whistles, xubuntu might serve you better. It's a lightweight version.

[cousinlucky]

Thank You, Hazel!

I have two problems. One is that my computer has a 2800+ ( 2.08GHz ) AMD Athlon XP processor.
No mention of this processor is on the list for xubuntu downloads. My second problem is how long it would take my dial-up connection to download xubuntu.

Can I buy a disk somewhere?

[oz]

You can download Xubuntu from here:

Get Xubuntu | Xubuntu

As for how long it would take to download it with dialup, you could check for a file that's about 10 MB in size on their mirror, then download it and time the download, then use the result to compute the time needed to download the complete ISO file (around 600 MB) for the distribution. Doing that should give you at least an approximation of the time that will be required.

Note also that Firefox usually tells you the time remaining for any download, and it adjusts the time that is remaining with any fluctuation in download speed.

[D-cat]

Xubuntu 8.04 LTS from on-disk.com

They also sell bootable USB keys.

Also, BTW, the CD ISO would take approxamately 36 hours to download at 5 KB/s average (best case dial-up connection)