4.6.3  Connectivity options

In times of the Internet being everywhere, and everything  on demand , 

connectivity becomes one of the most important features of a client. As the 

Internet was established once with UNIX based servers, and Linux was created 

with the goal of having UNIX for PCs, it is evident that Linux can easily fulfill the 

requirements in this field.

Naturally, a lot of popular Ethernet network cards are supported, so in this area 

there should be no problems. Regarding wireless network connections, it is 

necessary to recognize some current limitations. Lots of the wireless network 

cards that are broadly available on the market are built for the SOHO market, in 

which Linux only has a very small percentage. So the manufacturers of these 

cards want to save the money in order to be able to offer these cards very 

cheaply. As a result, many of these cards are hardly supported under 

Linux choosing cards from better known manufacturers is always good advice 

here, as, for example, Cisco offers Linux drivers for its wireless network cards.

As Internet connection via DSL or Cable modem operates via an Ethernet 

network interface, too, the same statement is valid here. With the aid of the PPP 

or PPPoE Protocol, establishing IP connections via these devices is known to be 

functional. Cable modem providers make this even easier by providing the IP 

addresses via DHCP.

A bigger problem is dial up connections, especially in the case of the so called 

winmodems, which are very common in notebook computers. These are 

modems that emulate the hardware components for the operating system, and 

so you need special software in order to use it. As software needs no resources 

and is cheaper to distribute, this might even be the better way. For winmodems, 

some Linux drivers are available for some models. Up to date information about 

this may be found at

http://linmodems.org

The support of these devices is dependent upon the distribution. Some have built 

in the winmodem support in their package; some have not. At least, it can be 

easier to use an external modem with a supported chipset than to spend a lot of 

effort on getting the internal winmodem working.

4.6.4  Work in offline mode

In this section we discuss working in offline mode.

Offline messaging

There are many full featured desktop e mail client applications available (MS 

Outlook, IBM Lotus Notes, etc.) that provide for offline access to a user's e mail. 

 Chapter 4. Technical planning 

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