I'll give it a shot on writing you a short manual which will at least bring you on the way:
1. Connecting the hardware
If you use a Hub to build your network, you'll need straight cables. If you're just linking two Computers, you'll need a cross-over one. (I don't thing that there are any NICs out there that differ from this rule!)
2. Setting up the OS
2.1. Windows
If you use windows and you
configured your NICs correctly (that is no yellow ! in your
hardware configuration),
and there is at least one protocol installed when you look at
your properties of the network (the SAME on both win-
machines),
and you share one or more folder on the win-machines
You should be able to "see" the other computer in the network neighbourhood.
If you don't, try a search (start->search for computer) for the name of the other computer.
This is very basic and quickly made. Since you want to include your linux-machines in your network, you should put some more work in configuring your network. i.e. set up a tcp-ip network with static ip-addresses.
To do this, you need to install the internet-protocol for your network card. Then go to the properties of your tcp/ip protocol and set a unique address for each computer. (should either be 192.168.0.x or 10.0.0.x where x is in [1..254]. Set the netmask to 255.255.255.0 Don't set any of standard gateway or dns-server. (you don't need those)
If you have done all this, you should be able to pint between the two machines. -> go to a dos-box and type
it should give you some success-message.
2. Linux
Set the ip-settings for your network-cards accordingly. Remember that in a LAN, the ip-addresses need to be unique!!!!!
Now you should be able to ping back and forth from linux to windows.
3. Network neighbourhood and file sharing
3.1 windows-windows
you pretty much just need to share the files from within your explorer (right-click on the directory you want to share)
3.2 linux-linux
you need to set up nfs. On how to do this, have a look at the howtos at
the linux documentation project .
3.3 linux-windows
you will need to install and setup the samba suite in linux. Also look for howtos at linuxdoc.org and/or browse this forum. There are a lot of posts that deal with this.
Hope this helped, Steave.