Hi,

I am new to this forum and new to Linux. I recently acquired an old-ish PC and decided to give Linux a try. I am pretty impressed so far, but I have a number of files on my Windows XP laptop that I want to transfer onto my Linux PC.

I am using Mandrake 9.1 and the PC does have a network adapter and, of course, all the usual serial ports. My laptop is running Windows XP Home but does not have a network card or serial port. It does, however, have a printer port. Both PCs have USB 1.1 ports.

I want to connect the two computers via the printer ports (or maybe printer to serial, whichever) so that I can transfer files from my Windows PC to my Linux PC. I've looked online for the solution to what I thought was a simple problem, but I haven't been able to find many answers. Even the answers I DID manage to find were very long-winded and complicated...certainly too complicated for someone who is new to Linux.

Can anyone help? I would be very grateful. Please try to explain it in layman's terms because my first experience with Linux was only a couple of days ago!

Thank you.

I can't answer that question directly but I would suggest - especially if you have not bought a laplink or similar parallel cable already - invest your money in a cheap network card and a ethernet direct link cable and use these.

You can then use ftp or something similar over a much faster connection over the network.

Thanks for the reply. Network card for the laptop is on the way, along with a LAN/network cable.