if it worked under Win 98 it should work under linux.
what does the comand
Code:
ifconfig
say?

and what does
Code:
lsmod
give? (everything alsa and fat, ntfs, ext, reiser you can discard, that is not relevant to this)

what does
Code:
dmesg|grep eth
say?

what does
Code:
 lspci|grep eth
say?