Although we ship speedtch.ko, we don't ship the PPP over ATM plugin which is required for use with it. Without this, UK users cannot use the standard USB DSL modem provided with most DSL packages. The pppoatm plugin requires libatm from the linux-atm package. Either we'd need to ship linux-atm, or we could build the pppoatm module with the required parts of libatm linked statically. If the latter, perhaps we'd want to build the pppoatm module in its own package rather than with pppd -- hence perhaps we'd want a ppp-devel package with just the header files needed to make a plugin? Discuss.
I think it would be good to include linux-atm in fc4. There has to be made any necessary adjustments in the initscripts and networking stuff.
some random comments: (caveat, the last time I used a STUSB was when I was living in the UK, this was kernel 2.4 time and speedtouch-1.1 was current at the time.) - http://membres.lycos.fr/linuxdebutant/modules.php?menu=Howtos&howtoid=15 has a french howto - the microcode for the STUSB is owned by alcatel, I doubt we will be able to supply this, but asking Alcatel sure will not hurt. Worst case a solution a la http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/ may work. - http://linux-usb.sourceforge.net/SpeedTouch/docs/howto.html has something called speedbundle, that should help in making the enduser's life easier. - we propbably want to include a VPI/VCI selector drop down in system-config-network, users will know what their provider is, but are generally lost when asked about the values. Thus selecting 'UK, BTopenworld' would set a VPI of 0 and a VCI of 38, 'US, BellSouth' would set a VPI of 8 and a VCI of 35, etc.
You're quite right, we should probably do these things. But if it gets to the point where all we have to worry about is the user finding the firmware and getting the VPI/VCI out of the documentation they're provided with, I'll be happy.
ppp-2.4.2-6.1 should be in rawhide soon, and includes the pppoatm plugin. The plugin actually uses very little from the ATM libraries, so I just imported the two routines it _does_ use rather than depend on the whole linux-atm package.