I'm really struggling on home networking. I don't understand anything because I have never did anything in windows or linux that involved anything other than hooking up a cable modem.

I know probably no one has the time to spoon feed me on setting this up and I am not asking for this but I would appreciate anything anyone can do that would guide me towards my goal of having a secure home network for my family.

Now, here's what I would like my PC's to be able to do at my home. I want to be able to transfer and see files both ways from PC's to PC's.

I currently have a cable modem (motorola sb5120), a linksys wireless router (wrt54gs). My main PC is a gateway (gt5056) which is hard wired into the wireless router. My second computer is a old dell 4100 what has a linksys wireless nic in it. The gateway has slackware12 & windows xp on it and the old dell has windows ME on it and Zenwalk. By the way I've somehow managed to get the old dell online in windows and Zenwalk. I don't think I've got everything just right on Zenwalk because I have to modprobe the ndiswrapper (rt61) and start up the dhcpcd wlan0 to get online.

Do I need to setup the gateway PC as a "server" to make all this work? Is that what most people do as far as file transfers on home networks and what programs will have to be set up for me to set up my main hard wired pc as a server? Is this project to big for someone who is just starting out trying to learn networking if it is what would be baby steps to try first. Like I said I don't know anything about networking but like so many others I would like to learn.

Thanks for reading such a stupid long post.

The first thing I would do would be to get the laptop to get on the network without manually configuring the ndiswrapper and DHCP. The zenwalk or slackware forum should get that going .

Next I would setup the system with internet access to get other computers to connect to the internet (Through both os's Slackware 12 and windows XP). You don't want everyone else loosing internet access when you change os's.

Since the laptop was online assuming wireless works already. Last thing to get done would be to learn samba file sharing.

Nice project though, got mine setup but I am no where near good enough to advise someone how to do it LOL.

EDIT: File sharing messes with some high-speed connections, will have to ask probably in networking (here) how get around that in windows.

I agree on the small steps. My problem is or was as of your post is to which baby step to take.
By the way the old Dell is not a laptop but don't think that matters but just wanted to make sure it did not.
So, at this point I just need to get Zenwalk on the dell to work properly from boot. When I set up the router on the wired pc in windows it worked in linux also. I think it's because the firmware in the linksys router clones the mac-address so it just doesn't care what os after that but would I wish I knew how that works.

Also, I think I need to make some decisions in two area's before I go ahead on my project here from what I've been reading.

First, I'm trying to understand all this "domain-name" and "host-name" stuff and I'm not sure what all this means and what roles it plays in the programs like NFS, Samba, or Apachie if I end up using them. When I installed slackware 10,10.2,11, and now 12 I always used localhost & localdomain becuase I didn't think it made any difference but now I think it may. But after the purchase of the linksys router I changed them to MyBox1 for the gateway PC and MyBox2 for the dell PC for my "localhost". I used something simple as my "domain-name". My configuration info (from the linksys router under 192.168.1.1) in firefox while in the wired-PC ( the gateway pc ) when using Slackware I see that my "Domain-Name" shows up as "hsd1.ms.comcast.net. Now I'm even more confused as to how to set this up properly. Wouldn't that be important to have the PC's named different names and also to have my own name for the "domain-name"?

Second question is what do most folks do or what is best in home networks as far as setting up my main PC ( the gateway PC ) as a server or not. I know there has to be some pros and cons on this so which is best.

Sorry again for the dumb questions everyone.

davimint,
Please edit your post #3 to remove your Street address. Your town & State are already displayed (nothing wrong with that), but Street Address and house number? Think about it. This is the Big Bad Internet here.
Have fun with networking, there are lots of HOWTOs

tredeger,
I have no concept of security or "RISK", I grew up in a time and place when we left the front doors unlocked. Sorry for being stupid. One of the main points about linux is security but if your not careful anything can be dangerous. Got to arm myself with more knowledge to keep myself safe.

First return from Google, with good reason. You can buy the book, or read it in your browser.

rickh,
It's not that I haven't googled, it the amount of information overload you may get when you do. One thing about linux I've learned is that there always a different "NOT BETTER" way of doing things. I'll read your link and maybe it's the one that get's me headed in the right direction, so thank you..

By the way, I've made two trips to the local book store hunting books about networking and If they were not so "MICROSOFT" happy, maybe they would put a decent title on the shelf.

You indicated that you have a linksys router. This is a NAT router, and that will help with security. If you don't explicitly forward a port to one of your computers, it doesn't know what to do with an incoming packet that isn't a part of an established connection and has to drop the packet. So it is effective as an internet firewall.

There is a the 2nd edition of the Linux NAG guide (Network Administrator's Guide) on the www.tldp.org website. It explains IP addresses, DNS, subnetting, email and other networking topics. And covers the parts of linux that perform various network related services.