[bcsco]

I swapped in a machine I'd previously set up running PCLinuxOS (I've never liked Ubuntu), running the same apps. The family barely noticed the change.

Is this PC connected to a peer network? Is it connected to a PC with XP Home Edition? If so, how serious was getting the PC's to handshake?

I'll look into PCLinuxOS. But would appreciate any input you have on the above, if possible.

[shorty_harris]

I don’t have XP home. I have one machine with XP pro corporate that I don’t turn on very often (only use it for games and MS flight simulator), two computers running PCLinuxOS (my current favorite distro), and two wireless laptops running linux (Asus EEEpc’s), all connected to my home network. Also have a NAS disk for backups and archive. I’m pretty sure they can all talk to each other (I grabbed some files off the windows computer from one of the linux computers last night), and they all for sure have no problem with the NAS. I’ll have to take a closer look tonight, but I don’t think there’s any problem, and I certainly didn’t have to do any extra configuration.

[AFreeBird]

I've had a central fileserver here at home for quite some time. It runs Linux, and my W2K machine(s), back when I was still running it regularly, mounted the shares just fine and printed to windows printers. As far as "communicate" goes, you'll have to have the Samba (What is SAMBA?) package (client and server) installed on your Linux box(es). Now I don't run Samba anymore because all my systems (even the IBM T30) run Linux, and it's no longer necessary.

But it works quite well.