Using an old system for storage / server
 

I am seeking guidance on using an old desktop system to let me store a very large amount of photographs and also to use it as a print server.

We have somewhere in the region of 400 GB + of photographs so far and my partner likes to have them displaying as a screen show rather than a static desktop wallpaper. She is running XP on her laptop whilst I am using Jaunty on mine.

What I would hope to do is to network the printer via the desktop and have it that both of us could access it from our laptops.

Is this viable and if so how do I best achieve this?

Network printing should not be much issue. You will need to see if your printer has got drivers for Linux or not first. If you got the drivers for Linux then you just need to install the printer and share it via samba so that windows users are able to use it on the network.

Samba can serve both purposes: sharing the printer and sharing the files. You could also use nfs for the files, but when dealing with windows, samba/cifs is just better. Your linux laptop will of course be able to access that as well.

Using an old system for storage / server
 

My thanks to you both for your replies. I will look further into this as it could be an easier way than keeping adding external drives or CDs