George, winmodems are not really complete modems. I use hardware modems exclusively. My XP laptop can with a winmodem and I tried to use it, but I found it would drop a connections if I played a dvd or something. So I even got a hardware modem for it.
Go to
this page and click on "modems 101" to understand the differences among hardware modems, winmodems, and software modems.
The "win" in winmodem is a clue that it is not intended to operate with other OS's. If you really want to get a winmodem running under linux, see
linmodems.org and
linmodem how-to.