[KLUG Members] Any sattelite ISP that supports Linux?

[Adam Williams]

>I cannot get dsl or broadband cable yet. Does anyone know of a two-way
>sattelite ISP that will work with Linux? 

Yes, there have been receivers advertised in the Linux Journal.  The
receivers are EXPEN$IVE.  

As someone who has worked with satellite technology I'm telling you flat
out: THIS IS NOT A SANE WAY TO CONNECT TO THE INTERNET.

There are two issues that CANNOT be confused as one: bandwidth AND
***LATENCY***.  You can have a 100Mbps pipe to Mars,  but it is still, 
by divine unalterable mandate, going to take AT LEAST ~8-12 seconds to
get there.

With satellite you've just added roughly a couple of hundred thousand
miles to your packets travel.  Even at the speed of light (and remember,
"c" is the speed of light in a vacuum, atmosphere is slower) it takes
awhile at those distances.

>I am in southern central
>Michigan, the only ones I have found so far are for Europe, Asia and
>Africa.

They are around, primarily marketed to the drooling morons who work for
the public school system.  Again, this is a fundamentally *BAD* idea.

>Direcway says I need to run Windows 95 or newer for their software.

Notice they don't say WinNT/2000!  They've made this work by hacking the
TCP/IP stack itself.  That should be enough evidence that this is
inherently broken technology.

>Any guesses if it would run under WINE? 

Not a whelps chance in a supernova.

>I don't really want to run MS but if
>I cannot get broadband cable or dsl I might have to just for a gateway
>machine for the sattelite.
>Any other satellite isp you might recommend besides Direcway. 

Yes: NONE.

Go with ISDN at least, but really, this whole satellite thing is a sham
of epic scale.  And read the EULA,  if they decide you are transmitting
two much they can squelch your signal, and the download is metered. 
This is not broadband by most definitions of the word.
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