I have a new SLES server with Novell SUSE r10 and want to provide simple file sharing to a mix of Mac OSX Leopard and Windows XP clients. What is the easiest way to access shares on SLED installation from both Mac and Windows clients.

If I set up Samba, do I need LDAP for authentication to the Samba shares?
Thanks,
Mike

First, no, you don't need LDAP to make Samba work. If you want to do simple directory sharing, it's not a big deal to set up, and there are lots of how-tos on Google for doing it. Even the default configuration it ships with might work.

For Windows, Samba is the best way to go. For Mac, I don't have alot of experience, but if you can map Windows drives, Samba will work for it too. Since Mac OSX is unix-based, it may support doing NFS shares, which is a more 'standard' way for *ix based systems to share files. But for simplicity, if Samba does both, go for it.

And you can even share printers via Samba too...set them up on the Linux box, and share them out. Gives you a little flexibility.