Hi,
The company I work for is looking to add a Linux server. We were wondering if Windows machines are able to see and detect a machine running Linux on the server. If it is possible, what distros seem to work well for situations such as this. We plan to have several hard drives running on the box, so I wonder if we would have to format them for fat32 to be seen on the network and use as storage?

I think what you are asking is if linux can act like a windows file server/ printer server? If this is the case the yes. There is an open source package called SAMBA

http://www.samba.org

This package comes with most distros, and can do quite a bit, here are some highlights.

Can act as a PDC in a NT Domain. Can cat as a full client in an active dir. If your active dir domain is using mixed mode it can be a
DC.

You will be exporting the native linux file systems using SMB / CIFS, this means that windows computers connecting to this server will not care what filesystem is under SMB / CIFS, they will only see SMB / CIFS.

So the short answer is yes you can use linux to participate in a windows network and no you don't have to use fat32 on the linux box.

Like mhiggins said you don't have to make the hard disks FAT32 for the windows machines to see them. In fact that makes them less efficient and secure. You should make them Linux native so you can use access permissions on them.

I administer a Windows XP professional network that uses a Linux server for DHCP, DNS, and an Internet Gateway and Firewall.

At my office workstation I have a Linux desktop and a Windows 98 desktop. Each machine has one shared folder, and the other machine can access no problem. Also, I have a printer connected to the Linux box that the Windows 98 machine prints to via the network.

I even have a Windows application installed via "wine (windows emulator-type program)" on my Linux machine, that I can run from my WIndows 98 box. (it doesn't run under Linux, but my Win98 box didn't have enough hard drive space).

You only need SAMBA to be set up for file and printer sharing (if you are going to store files/apps on the server.) Other than that, any other services like Web Server (HTTP), DNS, DHCP, Web proxy/filtering, can all be done with no special consideration of what Operating System your clients will be using (be it Windows XP, ME, 98, 2000, OS/2, Mac, Linux... etc.).

good luck

--A.