With most computers, Mint handles networking pretty much flawlessly. When an Ethernet cable is inserted, it will most likely automatically configure itself using DHCP (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol), and then you'll immediately see other computers on your network, and you can also access the Internet. However, perhaps, you'd like to set your own address or have a bit more control than just letting Mint do the work for you. In some cases, you may run into an issue where your machine includes a network interface card (NIC) that's not immediately recognized, causing you to need to do some configuration before your machine is up and running.

In general, drivers for NICs are built into the Linux kernel. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. The good thing is that quite a few NIC drivers are included by default; there is no need for you to configure anything. However, in other cases, your NIC may not be included. This happens most often when you use a computer...