Perhaps a really dumb question from a newbie, but I was always told that the dumbest questions are the ones that are never asked...

At any rate. I have an xp box that connects to a samba file server using "putty". I'd like to install some form of a gui based app that will run on the xp box to replace the command-line-only access that putty gives.

Any suggestions?

What kind of access to this file server do you want? There are a number of remote admin tools, but if it's direct access that you want, the most popular app is VNC. Most likely, depending on the distro and it's version, it's already installed - although maybe not enabled. Try opening up a VNC viewer (like tightVNC - http://www.tightvnc.com/) and connecting to: <serverip>:1 (ex: 192.169.1.100:1) - you'll be presented with the desktop logon!

This is a convient remote admin method, but nowhere nearly as fast as SSH, and very little to any security.

Plz let us know if this isn't what you're looking for...

vnc is one choise. cygwin is another (with cygwin, you can tunnel gui-programs via ssh).

Check out WinSCP. It's a GUI file manager that connects over SSH. I've been using it extensively, and find it quite useful