Ello,

I'm in a situation where I need to set up a Linux system that will allow me to share files from with Windows and Mac machines. All it needs to do is house hard drives that both the PC's and Mac's and read and write to. The catch is that I have never used Linux so I have little knowledge about Linux.

I would appreciate it if I could get a few suggestions one what linux distribution would work best for my situation. I have 2 Macs running 10.4 that are fully updated and 3 XP machines that need to be able to access the hard drives.


Thanks a lot,
Hotrock3

sounds like you want a file serving machine, yes? Well, any OS can do that... Windows, OSX, Linux, Irix, Solaris, etc.

If you've never used linux before & all this machine will ever do is hold & serve files, you may want to consider sticking with an OS you know. That said, we all love Linux & that's why we're here, so...

Simply install linux on a machine, then setup "samba" to share folders to other machines, then just mount the samba share on each other computer. Sounds simple enough, right? Well, it actually is.

I would start with a user-friendly linux. I'm a Debian guy & therefore would recommend Ubuntu. The installer is easy, the package management is great. Get that installed, then be sure to install "system-config-samba" from the package manager (the package manager can be found by clicking the "System" pulldown > Administration > Synaptic Package Manager). Then go to System > Administration > Samba & setup your shares (should be self explanatory, but you can come back here for help).

Done and done. ... AND there's no limit to the number of users attached to the share like there is under Windows

Thank you very much, I greatly appreciate it. Should work well once I get back on campus.

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Hotrock3