[Fsf-friends] Re: help wanted

Can u provide a list of common soft/internal modems which will work in the following distros ==> Red Hat 8/9 stock,Mandrake 8.2/9.1 (single CD version i.e no kernel source),Free BSD 2.5,Knoppix/Lify and Fedora core.Me and many of my friends have these distros installed on our systems but we are forced to surf the net from windows due to the non avalibity of drivers on GNU/Linux.The following is the list of soft/int modems we have. Motorola SM56 Voice fax Motorola SM56 Speakerphone Conextant (Rockwell chipset) Dax int modems Intex int modems Ham int modem found on a Compac system I know the ideal answer would be get a hard/ext modem,but pls understand that this is not possible.I am sure many ppl would like to find the same but cannot. Also can u suggest some tips & tweaks to make the system work faster.Most of us have old systems 2 to 4 yrs old like K6-2,K6-3,PIIs with a avg of 128Mb ram per system.All the newer distros really crawl on most of the systems.I know the answer would be to upgrade the systems,but not possible.One hack is to use a light and fast manager like Flubox and Icewm but we miss the eye candy that Gnome and Kde provide. Kindly help!! I was also very moved by your article "Sharing Dreams ... Seeking Help" LFY Dec 2003.I want to know if anybody is ready to go ahead and share their broad band/fat pipes in India and make new software like GCC,JAVA,latest Kernel sources etc locally present.It is indeed very sad that in India we do not have a single local mirror of any distro or GNU/free software.China and Pak have them but why not India???.Pak even has the local mirror of packetstrom http://packetstormsecurity.org.pk/ why not us. Every day we hear that India is poised to become the next super power in software but how?? when we even do not have proper flow of information and ideas amongst the common user. Why don't the big company's donate their old computers to NGOS and educational bodies. Wipe the data from its Hdd and install any of GNU/LINUX on it.Rather that just 'junk' them. Thousands of under prevliged children can benefit from it.I cant understand what's stoping them? Ppl who have a latest and greatest systems P4's and AMD -XP's can also help the community by just giving some CPU time for a good cause.They can compile the various popular software for different 'arch' like i586,K6-3 with all the optimization.And load it on the net for the ppl who have old and slow systems to download and use.I for one would very greatful and really appericate the speed boost which such a gesture would do for me.I am sure many users will appericate such a site or users group.I know from bitter experience that compiling some huge package is a nightmare on a slow system.I tried to compile the 2.6 kernel on Mandrake 9.1 it took some 6 hrs on my system and still did not work.On a P4 2.4 it took 10 mins. and worked!!! I was foolish enough to try to install gnome 2.4 from the source on my red hat 9.0,after 3 days and 3 almost sleepless nights still no luck.I would have been ever grateful if I could just DL the RPM and install it. Just some of my thoughts, hope to find some good news.Thanks for all the good work u are doing. All the best. Montosh Bisht "Hack into The Light" _____________________________________________________________ Linux.Net -->Open Source to everyone Powered by Linare Corporation http://www.linare.com/