My Mom uses Juno’s dialup service to connect to the Internet and for email. Her HP laptop (running Windows) was infected with something, and had really become unusable, it was so slow.

I took it home where my most valuable tool is a high-speed Internet connection.

After many tries, this is the general sequence of operations that worked.

1. Install Ubuntu 9.04. Other versions may work, I chose this because Linuxant had drivers to support the internal modem. It’s nice.
2. Run the upgrades offered.
3. Restart
4. The internal modem just wouldn’t work, so I bought an external USB modem from Best Buy. Zoom Modem, Model 3095.
5. Followed the installation instructions and found that this laptop isn’t supported (it’s an x86_64). Used the link above and built the driver from the source. Many thanks to Linuxant.com.
6. Added the user to dip and dialout groups
7. Installed Gnome PPP, and Network
8. Use sudo wvdialconf to configure wvdial
9. Manually edited /etc/wvdial.conf to add in the Juno phone numbers, username and password
10. Restart
11. Tested the connection using wvdial, it worked. Then tested with Gnome PPP, it worked. Finally, used Network and PPP to connect, and browsed to juno.com
12. Since I have a free account, Juno runs in a limited mode, but it is running. If you have a paid Juno account, it still won’t work with Linux. I recommend http://dialup4less.com as an alternate ISP.

Ubuntu is really nice to work with.