Mandriva Help/network too

So, I changed my hard drive partitions to install " mandriva free linux i586".

Anyways, it looks nice and pretty However, to me currently... its completly useless.

The Network won't work, it seems to have detected succesfully my proper network card ( onboard lan to motherboard) ULI m1689(motherboard chipset), ULI(ali) M5263 lan chipset.

However, the version that was on the dvd.. doesn't seem to really work, DHCP, Static... Nothing works... Well Static seems to connect, but completly useless when connecting websites/anything on the net.

I tried to download some "new" drivers from ULI website(uli.com.tw), However, I could unsuccessfully find the "KERNAL FOLDER in /usr/src/kernal2.6.8.... " as is in the installation guide.

I had this problem before, as in Windows Wise.. No other network cards worked on the motherboard.. Except the.. On board one.. and only would work with the brand newest drivers from uli site otherwise, it would.. not work.. sort of how mandriva is acting now..

So.. I'm quite lost..
As in, Figuring out what kernal Mandriva free linux has. Where it's located so I can do the proper installation of the drivers from uli ( even though, mandriva has them, but doesn't want to work.)

Then.. Donno.. I'll probably ditch Linux forever, since it wants to be.. Non happy with me.

"No other network cards worked on the motherboard"
Any PCMCIA card should work fine under Linux. If it doesn't, you also have a problem with your PCMCIA bus - which would be another issue entirely. If it's wired (you're connecting a cat5 cable) it should pretty much just work out of the box.

You're saying that you're having the same issues under Windows? Windows and Linux handle hardware completely differently so if this is the case, you need a new card. While these do go bad, I would be more inclined to think that you don't have your network set up correctly. If you have DHCP service, make sure you have that checked. If you don't have DHCP service, make sure you're assigning an address within the range of your network. If you think you have DHCP service but aren't sure, you'll need to find out.

Mandriva is a pile of steaming poo (to put it nicely), you should get a real operating system like Fedora Core or Ubuntu which will alleviate most of the problems beginning Linux users have.