For my broadband Internet I have several computers connected by cable to a Netgear DG834Gv5 router which has its own firewall.
I have the wireless turned off by choice.

My desktop and laptop are Linux only. (Ubuntu lucid lynx) I use the same username and password (very strong password) on both.

What I want to know is can I set things up so I can browse and copy files between the computers using say nautilus on either computer?

if not nautilus then I would happy to be able to do the same via
a terminal window.

I am not necessarily wanting to be told how but either what to Google for or where to find it.

Running an nfs server would probably work the best. Export directories you want to share and mount them on the other machine. The mounted shares will seem like normal directories. I share a $HOME/podcasts directory on my desktop, and use it mounted on $HOME/podcasts on my laptop. I forget that it's a network share. Using Nautilus to browse a shared directory, you will see previews in Nautilus.

Another option is using Samba. This is often done when you have Windows hosts on the LAN. If you use the cifs file system, the Linux permissions and even file acls are usable.

A third option is to use ssh. This is great for transferring files when you don't have a share set up on the other host. Simply select Go -> Network in Nautilus and select the computer. It uses sftp to transfer files. You will need to install the nftserver on both to run nautilus this way from either computer.

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You can use either NFS or Samba to share files and folders.
For NFS read http://nfs.sourceforge.net/nfs-howto/
Samba server can share files and folders on an ibrid network getting your shared content accessibile to Windows systems.
For Samba read: http://www.samba.org/samba/docs/man/...TO-Collection/
You can install nfs and samba via apt-get.

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