no modem = no internet = lost user
I've tried to install and encourage various people to use knoppix, or other linux distros.
The modem, internet access, is usually where I have to give them Windows back.
Having moved from New York to Sao Paulo, in Brazil, I'm having this problem much more often, as people here have very old computers, with cheap modems.
Lightweight Linux with modem drivers is what they need, but there's no such distribution.
Buying another modem, waiting for it to be installed, visiting linmodem.org and recompiling the kernel, suggesting DSL, etc is just a prelude until someone says "forget it.. let's just install windows".
techie gods have modems that work - mortal? only wind blows
I can get a modem to work with linux. So can you, and the next guy reading this post.
We know what a 'driver' is, what 'knoppix' is, and what a 'modem' is.
Give a knoppix or any linux CD to anyone else, and they'll most likely never reach the internet with it.
The best Linux I've seen with modem drivers so far is Kurumin, a knoppix-distro made by a brazilian who apparently knows his users. Scanmodem and various modem drivers, etc are right on the menu.
People here go to stores and *buy* 32mb Pentium 100 computers and win95 cd's with them. Yes, in 2004. Because they can afford those. They cost about a month's pay for the average wage-earner.
Spending an extra $10 for another (linux compatible) modem isn't too interesting. The whole computer ate up plenty, and can be made to work with Win95.
I'd expect that scenario to be very common in Africa, Latin America, Southeast Asia, perhaps also Russia, China, and a lot of places,
It would greatly reduce the digital divide to get all these people a knoppix-like cd which made their modem work. Any modem.
Somehow we need to get software modems to work in Linux - for users, easily.
Linux removed many times by me - because of no Internet
The Internet is the killer app today. Unfortunately linux today can't do it as well as Windows, for 98% of those with a modem.
In the past I installed Suse 8.0, Red Hat 6.0, Red Hat 7.0, Red Hat 9.0, Knoppix 3.2, Fedora core 1.
In my view, anyone who knows what "linux" and "winmodem" is, is no longer a newbie.
I removed many of those several times because I couldn't reach the Internet using it.
Even for troubleshooting the modem, I needed to switch back to Windows, get on the net, search for workarounds, then write down the information I found, switch back to Linux, try out those changes...
What if something needed to be downloaded INTO linux? Couldn't do it from windows. Mount a vfat partitition? Didn't know anything about that.
Use another computer? That's a hefty requirement for installing Linux. I didn't always have one, along with another monitor, etc.
Without decent internet access, it's impossible to troubleshoot anything, and few have the patience while there's a ready solution working - just one reboot away.
The only time I've seen Linux install modems is with Kurumin. Unfortunately it's based on binary drivers, but it's some progress I think.
I understand some of the challenges to write these drivers. Some hefty hacking will be required.
But I also see how not having them is keeping linux to those who have Ethernet, and away from those who have modems.
In other words, Linux today basically won't work for anyone at home with a winmodem.
If you go buy a brand-new laptop, or most any computer, 90% of them will come with a winmodem. Linux may even come free with it, or be downloaded free. Internet access will cost another PCMCIA or some other modem - plus ability to install it? That likely won't happen.
Give up on modems - for the time being anyway
Sadly, I think that the modem battle is largely a lost cause for Linux - at least for the foreseeable future.
I whole-heartedly agree with most of the comments here.
The internet is a killer app, and people won't go without. Many parts of the world still rely on dial up. Support for winmodems under Linux - whilst possible - takes a lot of effort and is really not appropriate for the average home user. It would be great for user adoption if we could get modems to "just work" under Linux.
However, support for winmodems is so bad under Linux for reasons that are largely beyond our control.
The main reason is vendors simply will not release enough information about their modems to enable reliable open drivers to be created. Those that do make an attempt to cater for Linux usually create a binary module that can be loaded up, but then there are issues of different versions of the kernel and different libraries for all the different distributions of Linux. They tend to end up supporting one and only one particular version of one particular distribution of Linux.
In addition, the licencing they use for these binaries tends to prohibit them being distributed by Linux "vendors", and so the end-users have to download them from the manufacturers web sites and install the drivers themselves. As has already been pointed out, this alone is enough to make Linux a non-starter for many people.
Linux is currently stuck in this Catch-22 situation whereby the modem manufacturers are not showing any real desire to provide a workable solution for Linux because the market share for Linux is so small, and the market share for Linux will remain small (at least in the home user arena) until support for hardware out of the box is vastly improved, which of course requires open drivers from the manufacturers.
This is true not just for modems, but for a number of different areas. Things like games software, USB cameras, 3D graphics cards etc. all fall into the same category.
It is for these reasons that I have largely given up trying to promote the adoption of Linux to home users. I am more than willing to try to help people who post questions on forums like this, but I no longer go wandering around to family and friends handing out Knoppix CD's and suggesting they give it a try.
I believe that the way to win the war is to give up on the home user front for the time being and concentrate on the corporate users. Most corporations provide computers for their employees to use that do not need to have games, esoteric peripherals like cameras and certainly no need for dial up because they are connected to the corporate network.
This is an area in which Linux can carve itself some marketshare because it is quite capable of doing most of the things required in this role. In addition, it is the IT department - not the users - who decide what goes on the desktop, and in many cases the IT admins. are just as sick of MS and Windows as are many of us here.
If Linux can gain some sort of respectable market share in the government or in business, then of course that will be the incentive for the manufacturers to start doing whatever it takes to start properly supporting Linux, and this will then speed up the adoption of Linux for the home users as well.
I don't think I am alone in thinking this way either. Consider Red Hat. They used to be the leading supplier of boxed distributions for the home users, but now they don't even have a home user boxed set anymore. They have given up on this market to instead concentrate on going after the businesses and corporations, and given their quite healthy recent financial results, the strategy seems to be working.
SuSE too (now Novell of course) seem to be following a similar course by jacking up their prices and concentrating on including "Enterprise" features. They have made headlines fairly recently for beating Microsoft in that contract with the council of the city of Munich.
I don't want to sound negative or defeatist, but I don't believe that Linux will ever break into the home user market using the approach that has been made up till now, and that we should concentrate our efforts into promoting it at the government and business level. That, for the time being, means forgetting about modems, and concentrating more on officy type things like word processors etc.
My AUD$0.02
a few ideas to improve modem drivers
I've been thinking...
A boot floppy / boot CD options that will:
- perhaps allow the modem to work and online to report it's chipset, drivers, kernel versions, etc that worked or not
- if the modem doesn't work, just run scanmodem to check what modem users have http://http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/
- easily log and upload the modem data somewhere, even if it's via windows.
- translate scanmodem to other languages, as it gives a lot of information
- list email addresses of manufacturers, organizations, etc where users should write to ask or lobby for modem drivers and source code for their modems
Try downloading Kurumin linux, it's got scanmodem and scripts to activate HSF, HCF, Conexant, etc drivers that are already compiled for it's kernel, etc. I've got several modems working with it, including many that winXP wouldn't detect.
Help develop a modem-boot-detect
To help with this you'll need to download Kurumin Linux.
It's only 180mb or so.
http://www.guiadohardware.info/kurum...x.php#download
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I'm writing a script to automatically detect the softmodem installed and load the driver at boot time, without clicking on the icons. For that I need to gather the identification codes of the largest number of modems possible.
If you have a softmodem of any kind, that works in Kurumin, post here the output of the lspci command. Just open a terminal, type lspci and paste the output of the command.
You can select all the text in the terminal and paste using the center button on the mouse.
If you know which option your modem works with, post it also, it will make my work easier.
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Estou escrevendo um script para detectar automaticamente o softmodem instalado no micro e já carregar o driver no boot, sem precisar clicar no ícone. Para isso preciso reunir os codigos de identificação do maior numero possivel de modems.
Se você tem um softmodem qualquer, que funciona no Kurumin, poste aqui a saída do comando lspci. Basta abrir um terminal, digitar lspci e colar a saída do comando.
Você pode selecionar o texto todo no terminal e colar usando o botão central do mouse.
Se você souber com qual opção do menu o seu modem funciona, poste também, facilita o meu trabalho.
A saída do lspci é algo como:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 740 Host (rev 01)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 530 Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 (rev 10)
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator (rev a0)
00:03.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90)
00:05.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k HSFi Modem (rev 01)
00:07.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
00:08.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
00:08.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 50)
00:08.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 51)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS650/651/M650/740 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter
getting a modem to work in linux/knoppix
so in knoppix to get a modem to work you ONLY have to:
1-install knoppix to hard disk
2-locate the chipset used in your modem
3-download the drivers for that chipset
4-compile the drivers or kernel with that source/binary code
5-chnage the /dev/modem to point to the right device
in spite of knowing all the reasons, i still find it ironic that a poor person, the typical winmodem user, needs to install and perhaps will even buy windows, just to access the net.
a corporate or wealthier user with ethernet or dsl can nearly always use linux.
what can regular people do to improve this, short of becoming c hacking programmers ?
Re: getting a modem to work in linux/knoppix
Quote:
Originally Posted by h00man
so in knoppix to get a modem to work you ONLY have to:
1-install knoppix to hard disk
2-locate the chipset used in your modem
3-download the drivers for that chipset
4-compile the drivers or kernel with that source/binary code
5-chnage the /dev/modem to point to the right device
in spite of knowing all the reasons, i still find it ironic that a poor person, the typical winmodem user, needs to install and perhaps will even buy windows, just to access the net.
You pretty much got it, its not so much the "typical winmodem user", but, more the "typical pc purchased now-a-days" comes with WinModems...
Quote:
Originally Posted by h00man
a corporate or wealthier user with ethernet or dsl can nearly always use linux.
Not so much the "wealthier" or "corporate" user, but, a user who "knows" what hardware works with Linux, and dictates the purchasing of a computer with those constraints involved...
Quote:
Originally Posted by h00man
what can regular people do to improve this, short of becoming c hacking programmers ?
I "never" hacked my system, nor do I program in "C", I just went to the dealer, said I want a new computer, without a "motherboard mounted modem", and added a modem from the "hardware" shelf. I found a motherboard that didn't have the modem "pre-installed" on it, then walked down the hardware shelves, found a nice modem that uses the seriel port, and the cost was "minimal" - the motherboard was cheaper, so I was able to pick a faster processor, and the "hardware" modem was around $25 -=- and I just came home, plugged it in, pointed KPPP to the seriel port, and was connected in two seconds.
The Computer dealer wasn't Gateway, or Dell, it was a Maa & Paa type, so they worked with me, not sure if this kind of "assistance" is available with the "BIG" dealers -=- but, if they want your business, they will do what YOU want, not want they want... They will learn, maybe after a few people call them up, and ask for "special" considerations on there computer systems ( ? )
Hope this helps,
Ms. Cuddles