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151Chapter 8: Connecting to the InternetYou can find out from your ISP how fast your DSL connection would be, because it varies. For an overview of DSL and Linux, visit the followingWeb page: www.tldp.org/HOWTO/DSL-HOWTO/ Satellite modems:Those who live in particularly remote or low- infrastructure areas might go the route of satellite modems (http:// tldp.org/HOWTO/Sat-HOWTO.html). You can consider this serviceequivalent in many ways to cable, in that you get it typically through the same providers that you get your satellite television signals from. Satellite has some drawbacks in that if your satellite television service is unreliable, your Internet service suffers the same fate. The upload and download speeds can also vary dramatically. Dial-up modems: The dial-up modem is still widely used in areas wherebroadband is either not available or not affordable. It translates the digi- talsignal from the computer into an analogsignal required for transmis- sion from the wall jack to the telephone company. Because the modemutilizes existing voice telephone service, you don t need any special setupbeyond subscribing to an ISP. However, you can t use the same phoneline for both dial-up and a conversation at the same time. See the sidebar Beware of devices posing as modems for additional concerns if you regoing the dial-up route. Wireless:The realm of wireless networking is where Linux today may giveyou the most trouble, depending on what kind of wireless you re using. Four major types of wireless exist, and they re often referred to as a groupas WiFi: 802.11a, 802.11b, and 802.11g, and Bluetooth, which are alsoreferred to as just A, B, and G. A and B are the best supported, both beingolder than G, but G is the one most people should aim for because it hasthe best security. A and B are also the best supported in Linux so far, because again, they ve been around the longest. G s security also addslevels of complexity that require more cooperation from the manufactur- ers of the cards. Many wireless cards today are, in fact, capable of doingmore than one of these types. The best advice I can give here is to do a Web search on the make andmodel of your wireless card (or the one you re thinking of buying), plusthe word Linux, and see what you find and, of course, you can checkthe hardware compatibility pages for the distributions as well. Becausethis area is one where technology is quickly advancing, always check thedates on the resources you find and make sure that they re recent. Evenbeing six months old can mean you re getting out-of-date information. Some useful links (some are more advanced than others) for this topicinclude the following: Wireless LAN resources for Linux: www.hpl.hp.com/personal/ Jean_Tourrilhes/Linux/ A method for using Windows wireless drivers in Linux: www. linuxant.com/driverloader Network Topology Guide: www.homenethelp.com/network13_

If you have the luxury of dual-booting to Windows, your ISP can help youinstall your broadband connection, and then you can tinker with gettingLinux connected as you have the time and inclination. I point you to somesites that can help you configure your broadband connection as you look atthe types available: Cable modems: Many cable television companies have expanded theirproduct lines to include Internet access over their cable infrastructure. When you subscribe to a cable Internet service, the installation techni- cian often can provide you with a special device, called a cable modem, along with a standard network adapter (like an Ethernet card). The tech- nician then installs the network adapter into your computer and connectsthe cable modem to it. As far as speed goes, to get the exact speedsavailable, you need to talk to your cable provider. The following Webpage provides a document that contains helpful information about various cable providers and Linux: www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Cable-Modem Integrated Services Digital Network (ISDN): Not too long ago, ISDN wasone of the only residential high-speed options. It appeared when 28 Kbps(half the speed of today s regular dial-up modems) was about all thatyou could milk from the copper strands that connected your telephoneto the telephone company. ISDN is still available in some areas andpromises a steady 128 Kbps as long as you re within 3.4 miles of thetelephone company s central office. You need two special devices to useISDN: an ISDN modem (typically provided by the ISDN ISP) and a net- workadapter (sometimes an Ethernet card). Because ISDN is used solittle these days, not many specific sites are devoted to it. The overallmodem HOWTO (http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Modem-HOWTO.html) doescontain pointers to the latest ISDN information, as well as just beingplain interesting to read. Digital Subscriber Line (DSL): DSL works much like ISDN in that it carriesdata to your telephone jack in a digital format. DSL is popular because itprovides a faster connection with lower installation and service coststhan ISDN, and it utilizes the existing copper telephone wiring providedby your telephone company. You can even use the same phone line as aregular phone line! A DSL connection requires additional communicationhardware, which your Internet Service Provider (ISP) should provide. Note that several variants of DSL exist: IDSL (over an IDSN line) ISDN line Symmetric Digital Subscriber Line (SDSL) Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) Generic DSL (XDSL) 150Part II:Internet Now!

Chapter 8Connecting to the InternetIn This Chapter Understanding common Internet connection methods Setting up your Internet connection Connecting to your Internet Service Provider (ISP) Understanding enough TCP/IP to be dangerousEvery improvement in communication makes the bore more terrible. Frank Moore ColbyYou may already be connected to the Internet if you re on a machine that sconnected to a LAN and configured the networking during installation. To test whether you have a connection, open up a Web browser and try to goto an outside Web site (like www.linuxworld.com). If it works, you re up! Noneed for this chapter. Otherwise, read on. Internet Connectivity 101A few words regarding the broadband options (DSL and cable) are in orderbefore I begin. The word broadbandhas a technical definition, but I just use itto mean high-speed Internet access. Although a dial-up modem can typicallytransmit information at speeds up to 56 kilobits (thousand bits) per second, broadband connections can reach 50 times that speed. Nowadays, the Webcontains lots of images and multimedia elements, and enjoying these featuresthrough a 56 kbps dial-up modem is similar to drinking a cold glass of waterwith an eyedropper when you re dying of thirst. Don t let high-speed providers discourage you from using Linux with theirservices. Just because they don t support Linux directly doesn t mean that thetechnology doesn t work with Linux. TCP/IP (the set of traffic rules for the Inter- net) was developed for the Unix operating system, from which Linux descends.

In this part . . . In this part, you make the necessary mental and physi- cal connections to hook up your Linux machine to theInternet, including configuring telephone dial-up to anInternet Service Provider (ISP). You also discover how todo some basic network troubleshooting, just in casethings don t go perfectly. Next, you set up your Webbrowser, e-mail client, and newsreader software so thatyou can surf the Web, send and receive e-mail, and accessnewsgroups. Armed with the facilities you install in thispart, you enable yourself to extend and customize yourLinux system to your heart s content. You also find outhow to travel on the electronic highways and byways ofthe Internet to get things done!

Part IIInternet Now!

146Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet You can use many of the tools discussed in this chapter at the commandprompt, though not all of them. YaST actually has a full command-line versionin case you re not using a GUI! Finally, you can look in one more place. From the main menu, choose System. Configuration: OpenOffice.org Printer Administration:See Chapter 17 for more aboutthis tool. SaX2:The base GUI configuration tool. YaST:The system configuration tool. Xandros toolsXandros offers a customized version of the KDE Control Center called theXandros Control Center, available by choosing Launch .Control Center (seeFigure 7-9). Both your system-wide and your individual look and feel settingsare available in this tool. As you can see, the cool thing about learning one Linux distribution is thatyou re learning useful things to help you survive another version of Linux. Remember that all of these distributions are relatives, like cousins. Now getout there and have some fun tweaking your system! Figure 7-9: TheXandrosControlCenter inXandros 2.5.11_

Red Hat and Fedora Core toolsRed Hat s Fedora Core community project comes with a number of toolsdeveloped by Red Hat for its commercial products, as well as a variety oftools built by the community, such as the GNOME Project s tools. When itcomes to customizing your desktop, you can find most of what you re lookingby choosing Applications.Preferences. Rather than having a large controlcenter, GNOME has opted to keep the configuration tools broken into smaller, individual programs. You find this layout in other GNOME installations as well. Keeping with the theme of smaller, more specialized tools, your varioussystem-wide configuration options are available by choosing Applications. System Settings. SuSE toolsLike Mandrake, SuSE offers two primary places to configure your system. Oneof them is (again) the KDE Control Center, which is available by going to thelizard (geek-o) head in the lower left corner (the main menu) and choosingControl Center. This version of the KDE Control Center is slightly differentthan the standard one as it s got support for YaST s (Yet Another Setup Tool s) modules each of the individual configuration routines within YaST builtin. However, to use YaST directly, you can go to the main menu and chooseSystem.YaST (see Figure 7-8). Figure 7-8: The YaSTinterface inSuSE 9.2.145Chapter 7: Configuring Linux11_

Mandrake toolsMandrake includes many configuration tools, though actually some of them are duplicates you often have the option of running a large tool, or just the small component of that tool that you want to deal with. You canfind most of the Mandrake tools by going to the main menu and choosingSystem.Configuration. This submenu contains the following options: Configure Your Desktop:The KDE Control Center contains many, manyoptions for tweaking your desktop settings. Each user on your systemcan change things according to their own preferences. KDE:Each individual option here maps to one of the choices in the KDEControl Center. It s a handy way to avoid having to open up the wholetool just to make one change. Hardware:A number of the hardware-related settings from theMandrake Control Center are available here, eliminating the need toalways open that tool. Packaging:This may be one of your more popular options as you useMandrake over time. Here s where you find many of the MandrakeControl Center options for managing your software. (See Chapter 12 tofind out more about these options.) Printing:This option leads you to printer-related programs and utilities. Other:A smattering of tools some available in the Mandrake ControlCenter and some just plain handy by themselves. Configure Your Computer:The Mandrake Control Center (see Figure7-7) is usable only by the system administrator (root), who can altersystem-wide settings here. Figure 7-7: TheMandrakeControlCenter inMandrake10.1.144Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet

Change Password:Change the password for the account you re currently using. Programs To Autostart:Contains shortcuts for the programs you want to start automatically when you log in. Add items to this folder(once it s open): 1.Open the main menu. 2.Browse to the program you want to launch when Linspire starts. 3.Drag the program into the Autostart window. 4.When the context menu pops up, select Copy Here, and yournew Autostart shortcut appears. Rename Computer:Change the name you assigned to this computer. User Manager:Create and remove user accounts. Control Panel:The Linspire Control Panel (see Figure 7-6) is the centralpoint for configuring this distribution for everything except adding andupdating your software. You find out how to do work with this panel inChapter 12. Figure 7-6: The Linspire4.5 ControlPanel. 143Chapter 7: Configuring Linux11_

Linspire toolsThe first time you run Linspire, the First Time Setup dialog box appears, andit will keep appearing until you check the I Agree To License checkbox. In thistool, you have the option of walking through a system configuration process, setting values like your time zone, date, time, resetting your main password, changing your screen s resolution, creating new user accounts, and renamingthe machine. Clicking Finish closes the tool and launches the Linspire AudioAssist Tutorials. Feel free to listen to (and watch) these as long as you likebefore moving on! If you want to bail out immediately from the Audio Assist Tutorials, click theX in the upper-right corner to close the tutorials. To find the remaining configuration tools, choose settings from the mainmenu(the L in the bottom left corner) and then choose one of the followingcommands: Figure 7-5: TheKonqueror3.6 PrintingManager. 142Part I:Getting Your Feet Wet