PPP is by far the most widely used. It's used for Internet
access. For dialing out to public libraries, bulletin boards, etc.
minicom is the most popular followed by Seyon (X-Windows
only) and Kermit.
Minicom is only a communications program while Kermit is both a
communications program and a file transfer protocol. But one may use
the Kermit protocol from within Minicom (provided one has Kermit
installed on one's PC) . Minicom is menu based while Kermit is
command line based (interactive at the special Kermit prompt). While
the Kermit program is free software, the documentation is not all
free. There is no detailed manual supplied and it is suggested that
you purchase a book as the manual. However Kermit has interactive
online help which tells all but lacks tutorial explanations for the
beginner. Commands may be put in a script file so you don't have to
type them over again each time. Kermit (as a communications program)
is more powerful than Minicom.
Although all Minicom documentation is free, it's not as extensive as
Kermit's. Since permission is required to include Kermit in a
commercial distribution, and since the documentation is not entirely
free, some distributions don't include Kermit. In my opinion it's
easier to set up Minicom and there is less to learn.
Here is a list of some communication software you can choose from,
If they didn't come with your distribution they should be available
via FTP, . I would like comparative comments on the dialout programs.
Are the least popular ones obsolete?
Least Popular Dialout
ecu - a communications program
pcomm - procomm-like communications program with zmodem
xc - xcomm communication package
Most Popular Dialout
ppp dialers for getting on the internet: chat, wvdial
C-Kermit -
portable, scriptable, serial and TCP/IP communications including file
transfer, character-set translation, and zmodem support
seyon - X based communication program
Fax
efax a small fax program
hylafax a large fax program based on the client-server
model.
mgetty+fax handles fax stuff and login for dial-ins
Voicemail Software
mvm is a Minimal VoiceMail for Linux
vgetty is an extension to mgetty that handles voicemail for
some modems. It should come with recent releases of mgetty.
Dial-in (uses getty)
mgetty+fax is for modems and is well documented (except for
voicemail as of early 1999). It also handles fax stuff and provides
an alternative to uugetty. It's incorporating voicemail (using
vgetty) features. See
About mgetty
uugetty is also for modems. It comes as a part of the
ps_getty package. See
About getty_ps
Other
callback is where you dial out to a remote modem and then
that modem hangs up and calls you back (to save on phone bills).
SLiRP and term provide a PPP-like service that you can
run in user space on a remote computer with a shell account.
See
term and SLiRP for more details
ZyXEL is a control program for ZyXEL U-1496 modems. It
handles dialin, dialout, dial back security, FAXing, and voice
mailbox functions.
SLiRP and term are programs which are of use if you only
have a dial-up shell account on a Unix-like machine and want to get
the equivalent of a PPP account (or the like) without being authorized
to have it (possibly because you don't want to pay extra for it, etc.).
SLiRP is more popular than term which is almost obsolete.
To use SLiRP you install it in your shell account on the remote
computer. Then you dial up the account and run SLiRP on the remote
and PPP on your local PC. You now have a PPP connection over which
you may run a web browser on your local PC such as Netscape, etc.
There may be some problems as SLiRP is not as good as a real PPP
account. Some accounts may provide SLiRP since it saves on IP
addresses (You have no IP address while using SLiRP).
term is something like SLiRP only you need to run term on
both the local and remote computer. There is no PPP on the phone line
since term uses its own protocol. To use term from your PC
you need to use a term-aware version of ftp to do ftp, etc. Thus it's
easier to use SLiRP since the ordinary version of ftp works fine with
SLiRP. There is an unmaintained Term HOWTO.
Download
