On Thu, 2006-01-19 at 08:59 +0200, Dotan Cohen wrote: > Can we distribute a "Connecting Fedora to an ISP" handbook for the > ISP's? Because when I call my ISP, the first question they ask is > "Which Windows do you have"- they have a flowchart with instructions > on connecting Microsoft operating systems to the internet, including > which tabs to select and which checkboxes to check. In recent years I haven't had too much trouble with ISP configurations and Linux. I haven't had one fob me off if I stop them from giving me a Windows set up recipe, then ask them just to tell me the phone number, username, password, whether I need to preset DNS or proxy addresses, and what the mail server addresses are, etc. > Why can't we create something similar for Fedora? The Network > Configuration tool has ALL the same options that the Microsoft one > has- just in different places. I think what's really missing is within Fedora. Most of what we needed was in the network configuration GUI, and I think anybody with five minutes to spare can step through it and put the right information in he right places, as far as getting a dial-up connection to work. But the set-up routine didn't bother to make a device link for the modem, I had to do that by hand (i.e. nothing created /dev/modem, and nothing was there to say your modem has been found at /dev/ttyS0). And all computer OSs seem to leave you to figure out how you separately configure your web browser proxy, your mail client send and receive server addresses, etc. Trying to make a recipe to set up your dial-up connection is fraught with errors. Just look at the problem with Windows, which only has a few versions to contend with. There isn't an all purpose step 1, step 2, step 3 procedure to follow, they're all different. Through in umpteen versions of Linux, BSD, and whatever else, and you've got far too many variations to train an ISP lacky to deal with. The best solution is for your computer to make it easy to configure. And that can mean two things: A guiding routine that steps you through configuring everything that needs to be configured. A set-up GUI where it's dead easy for you to figure out what you have to fill in and where (well named gadgets, explanations for the options, etc.). Or the same for configuration text scripts/files (a basic template with the bare minimum, and something obvious so you can work out what manuals to read for the optional extras). -- Don't send private replies to my address, the mailbox is ignored. I read messages from the public lists.
