Any Dail-Up Services that work with Linux

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My Friend has a 2 year old Dell Dimension Destop that shes using out. Out in her area she is also stuck using American Offline[AOHell] on her computer and it is very slow on Windows XP.
Since she only uses it for school work and hates Microsoft due to the unstability in the OS i was thanking of switching her to Ubuntu. Only thing is no Dail=Up sevices have Linux support or work with Linux.[Anythings better than AOL.]

Note- The computer was wiped and is still lagging with Windows XP.

What's this? I've never had the slightest problem, with any dial-up service and Linux, and I've used a bunch.

Sometimes they are a little unhelpful about telling you some of the details on the connection (dial-up or broadband).

E.g. I just had some hassle with my ISP, because they changed the username I needed to use to connect to the NNTP server, didn't tell me about the change, and also still show the old username form on their website. Saying that reminds me - it's time to moan at them again about that, as they still haven't replied to my last email complaining about it.

heck, most servers (or a good many) run on Apache, or some other variant of Linux. I'd try open source things, maybe Firefox has a Linux version. As for ISPs, it depends on what you can reach.

We have people from IBM, AOL...
Is that why your models are so slow?
(glare) - The Stepford Wives

You should have no problem with service but you may well have a problem if yore PC has a software modem (often called a winmodem) and might be unable to find a driver.
This is very likely with a dell box.

NDISwrapper may allow for modem use even if there are no drivers for *nix.

Coincidentally, a friend just posted me a link. It would seem that Dell are finally offering Ubuntu instead of Virusta, and so far as I can work it out, for £30 ($60?) off.

Winmodems used to be a major problem (I've even patched source code to get one working, in the past), but these days, they are much less of a problem. Many just work.

There is a new problem, going around... same sort of thing... wireless cards are sometimes a hassle. The Dell box above does list a different one on the Ubuntu vs. Vista builds.

It's so easy (and free) to check it out - just plug in a live CD for whichever flavour of Linux you fancy, and see if it all works.

While most ISP's hotline staff have no idea what Linux is or that you can get online with it, it normally is possible to go online with Linuxen, some distroj even have some ISPs pre-configured. As long as your modem is supported and you aren't stuck with Bezeq, it should work. As was already said: use a live-CD to test compatability!

Most ISPs like PeoplePC Online, Netzero, Juno, Earthlink, and Netscape only provide Windows Support. Even with that said could i use one that Windows Compatiable Via WINE.

When you say "only provide Windows Support", gamefreak, it's only a partial truth.

I have yet to come across anyone (except the old style AOL), where they will not tell you all the needed detail to get a connection working. There's nothing a Linux box likes better than connecting to the internet - that's its natural habitat.

However, it can be a nightmare to get a Windows machine to function with an ISP. That's when support is critical (and often not actually forthcoming - so much for "Windows Support").

there are good winmodem drivers out there for conexant and mars chipset drivers. and possibly a few others.

for conexant drivers look at www.linuxant.com the free driver works very well and will do up to 14.4, if you want more than that the price is so incredibly cheap that you would be a fool not to pay.


now on to "only provides windows support" all dialup ISPs use PPP (point to point protocol) and a RADIUS server to
do the IP framing and authentication, assignment of an IP address etc. all you need to do is figure out your phone number, username and password which should already be in your windows dialup networking settings.

then you just configure Linux's ppp settings to match. its the same sort of scenerio as a macintosh user trying to dial up to the same service.


hope this helps. oh and to the guy that suggested NDISWrapper modems dont have NDIS drivers. things like actual network cards do, you might be able to drive an ethernet or wireless LAN card with NDISwrapper but not a winmodem.