I did try google, but I couldn't phrase the search well enough to get any specifics... and I realize this might turn out to be a windows question, but anyway:

How can I access my linux (slackware 12.0) PC that has a dynamic IP by name within our home? I do know about the hosts file, I don't think that's what I want, because the ip number does change after restart.

I want to make a useful network of our home comuters so that my wife's windows 98 computer can access X linux apps. I have set up cygwin & it works, but I have to manually specify the linux ip address to cygwin. I would also like for various conveniences our two machines to be available to each other by name.

The ISP assigns IP addresses from DHCP.

I don't know anything about DHCP, windows DNS, routing in general.

Both PCs connected by ethernet cable to a Wireless router (it has 4 cat5 jacks in back). We get addresses like 192.168.1.100. So my question is: is there a way to set up our machines so she can call my machine linux.made-up-name and I can call her's windows.made-up-name

Your Gateway/Router is your DHCP server...not your ISP.

Your Gateway/Router NATs that IP to a public IP. If you set up your Linux box with a Static IP address that is in the same subnet; you should be able to always connect to the linux machine.

-C

Thanks custangro - very helpful - I didn't know the term "NAT" so just reading about that learned me a lot.

So you're saying I can arbitrarily choose something like 192.168.1.50 and tell my machine then set itself up that way? Will that be its IP number in addition to or instead of the IP number it gets from DHCP?

Can you just tell me what file(s) to edit to set to a fixed IP number and I'll google for the details.

Set up your router to give your computers static IP numbers; this is usually done by reading out the 'MAC' and telling the router to always associate that MAC with a particular IP - in fact most routers will display the MAC of the currently connected machines, which makes life much easier for you since determining the MAC on Win95/98 was excessively difficult (thanks to MS).

To make things simple, switch on all computers and write down the MACs and some notes so you know which computer is which (my computer, kids computer, wife's computer etc), then shut down most computers (so there will be no active leases), then check the router configuration and set up your list of static IPs and computers (and printers which are directly connected to ethernet). Once the router is configured you might want to restart the network on your Linux machine to see that it gets the static IP you want:
ifdown eth0
ifup eth0

Routers can usually be set to dispense dynamic as well as static IPs; that's convenient when you have the occasional visitor plugging in or when an interface card fails and you want to be able to just connect as usual until you reconfigure the router.

Thanks, this is all very helpful.