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You can do it, Mr. All you need is install a distribution of your choice and setup samba on it. The internet is plenty of howtos for doing this.

Have fun!

A general description: you would use Samba server to set up to share files between WIndows and Linux. There's a how-to with Samba I think...at least the basic idea to get it running. In Samba you create folders you wish to share. You will also need to create a user/users who can access these files and put in the appropriate permissions (user1 can only read while user2 can read/write) on however you want it. Once this is set, and assuming your machines are networked you're ready to go. Just login with the correct username/password to access your files on Linux and that's it.

Thanks for the info...

Should I set up Linux as a desktop or server?

The differences between these configurations are just the packages that are pre-selected on the installation. As you have an old machine, I think you can stand for a server option without Xwindow, the graphical environment.