I am a recent converter to linux and so far this board has helped me get it up and running. I have decided to get my feet wet and so here I am. My 2nd question is about networking my linux box with my LAN....

I have been tinkering around with linux for about 2 weeks now and I still cannot figure out how to get my linux box to see my winXP network. I have read other posts and have dl Samba, but I am ultra lost in the setting it all up range. My notebook(Compaq 1275), is accessing the internet fine. It found that the eth connection, which I am using a Xircon 10/100/56 PCMCIA card, but I cannot get my network to see it. My router sees it as an unknown computer, but that is as far as I can get. I have tried setting different configs on the linux box and even went as far as installing Samba, although I do not know if I installed it correctly.

Does anyone have a fairly non-painful way for me to acheive this?