Maybe somebody here can point me in the right direction. I've spent all night looking through HOWTOs and googling, but I haven't found an answer for my problem.

Basically, I've used Mandrake for a long time. I found it really easy to set up my home network. Despite this, I'm still relatively clueless when it comes down to it. Mandrake was just so easy to get everything up and running, I never actually learned that much.

Now I've switched to Fedora Core 4 (on one computer) and ASP Linux (based on Fedora) on the second. Both computers (which are behind a router, by the way) can get onto the internet, so I know that the network cards are working. I can't figure out how to get them to see each other. I don't even know what to do first! Most of the HOWTOs I've found are for samba, but as far as I know, this is for a Windows / Linux network. Is there a different way to go about it when both computers are running Linux?

See? I told you... clueless newbie.

If any of you can even point me in the right direction, it'll help a lot.

Thanks,
Baltika

I take it both are on a router/switch combo?
This suggests the router does dhcp, and both computers have their nics configured for dhcp.

So the first step - make sure the IP address is obtained by DHCP, and a hostname is set for each computer.

In the terminal, ping the other host by name...

If you cannot see them you should still should be able to connect to them through you favourite web brower, just type this in the address bar:

smb://ipaddress/sharename

or

to list all the shares on the machine:

smb://ipaddress

You are right, samba's purpose is M$/Linux sharing. However, it also shares Linux/Linux just fine. I have 3 machines 2 Linux, 1 M$ and samba allows full connectivity from anybox to anybox. A BIG help in getting samba going is a graphical tool called "swat", which does most of the configuration for you. Sharing a printer on the network is really easy. Nautilus, the file manager, understands smb://somebox/someuser and allows drag'n'drop.

OK, a new day, a fresh outlook on things... I think I'm ready to do this.

I can ping each computer from the other.

And yes, they're both behind the same router, which is set up for DHCP. Windows and Mandrake could see each other perfectly (although I think I used Lin Neighborhood to help out with Mandrake).

Now I'm sort of stuck as to what step two should be. I did turn on firewalls on both computers when I installed Fedora - how can I make sure that the computers can see through the firewalls?

Thanks for any help,
Baltika

To make things easier for now disable firewall on both machines if running. This elimantes this as an issue for now. Since you are behind the router it should cover your security as long as you do not have any port forwarding or dmz setup. Once disabled on both try connecting again. If you wish to enable firewalls then you need to open the necessary ports for the services you are trying to use. Google around for what needs to be open per server type.

Hope this helps.
Brian1