Infrastructure Software

Hi, I've always been a Windows user and am now trying out some various Linux distros. This is mainly because I need to use the programming environment 'Poplog' for my University course, and would like to be able to work on things on my own computer as well as the ones on campus. So I apologise now for being a complete Linux newbie and not understanding any terminal commands etc...

I've already tried using Ubuntu 6.10, but couldn't manage to install Poplog for whatever reason and so decided to try Solaris instead. I'm on a small home network (not wireless) at the moment consisting of my computer and only one other, and Ubuntu had no problems whatsoever connecting to this straight away. It simply worked as soon as I had installed Ubuntu and didn't have to play around with any settings or drivers.

This is not the case with Solaris 10! I have no idea how to get the internet to work in this operating system, so I would really appreciate some advice! In case it makes any difference, my computer is a Pentium 4 3.06 GHz and the network card is the one that was built in when I bought the PC (Dell Dimension 4600) - I think it is the 'Intel Pro/100' network card or something very similar. The name of the home network is MSHOME I think; the default setting when configuring the network within Windows.

The only menu within Solaris that I could find to enter my network details was entitled "Configure Network Proxy Settings". Assuming this is the correct place, I still have no idea what to enter as my 'Proxy Host Name' and 'Proxy Port'. Is this even the correct place to set up the Internet or do I need to do this somewhere else?

Thanks for any help!