Computer refurbishing-- Ubuntu, networking, pppoe

[me-5yx05kfkO/aqeI1yJSURBw at public.gmane.org (Matthew Gillen)]

On 22/06/07, Stephen Ronan <sronan-VmQCmMdMyN0AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> But there's a lot of concern about people's ability to get up and running,
> particularly on the Internet, once they get the machines home. He wondered
> what variety of problems people might run into and whether it might be
> possible to find or develop some handouts that would help get people over
> the initial hurdles, esp. in regard to getting online.

Martin Owens wrote:
> First thing, most broadband connections should work correctly. modem
> connections might be a little more problematic or where you have a usb
> router instead of an Ethernet connection.

For what it's worth, I believe that Martin is correct, and it /should/ be
pretty plug-n-play for most people.  However, the thing I'd be most concerned
about in this situation is that your avg Joe will have a hell of a time trying
to get support (if they ever needed it) from the ISP they're most likely to
use (Comcast, Verizon) for any flavor of linux box.  So as long as they never
have any sort of problem that would normally require the ISP to actually do
something, they should be fine.  (although since half of what they tell you to
do is power cycle your modem and your computer, I guess that's pretty
cross-platform ;-) )

Furthermore, if you get one of these ISPs that wants you to run their
(windows-only) "installation" software before you can get on line, you might
get some very confused people.

HTH,
Matt

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