First off, I'm having a lot of fun playing with my linux box. It makes me feel like i'm accomplishing something instead of having the OS accomplish everything for me, like Win XP. Now, I am a newbie with Linux and network servers, but I am not letting that daunt me from accomplishing my goal; making my linux box a gateway and partial file server for the home network.
I have some minor questions that can be answered at leasure, but I really want the important ones looked at first.

Here's the set-up:
Celeron 300 (ovclk'd to 450) Mendocino
128mgs SDRam (Low Density)
20gig Maxtor UDMA Mode 4 Master on first Ultra-ATA port (All Linux)
2gig Quantum UDMA Mode 2 Master on second Ultra-ATA port (NTFS)
40x CDRom drive Master on first IDE port
16x10x40 Yamaha CDRW (first generation) Master on second IDE port
Abit BE6 ver. 2 Motherboard
Graphics blaster 3D TNT (AGP)
Vortex sound card (bows head in reverence to the late Aureal)
Linksys 10/100 ethernet card (bought in '99)
Linksys 10/100 ethernet card (bought a few months ago)
Mandrake 10.0 Community OS

Main goal:
I want to set this box up as a file server and gateway for my home network. I have a cable modem which I will plug into the newer Linksys card. My 4-port hub will plug into the older card.
I've somehow managed to connect it to the internet through the hub while Windows XP was online at the same time (not exactly what I wanted so I didn't write it down--- /me is dumb). I have two Win XP box's which will be clients and maybe a 98 sec. edition. Also, a friend's laptop might be plugging into it from time to time.

Dilema:
Since I am new to Linux and the server aspect of networking, I don't know much about the terminology.

Questions:

1. When I set up the cable connection, should I let it auto-pick the IP or should I go static?

2. Why does Mandrake see the older linksys card as a Lite-On card? Is the driver wrong? The newer card is seen as a linksys card.

3. What is the DHCP host name? And, should I leave that blank if the assign host name box is checked?

4. What is Host name (optional)? Is that my linux box name or the workgroup?

5. What is Zeroconf Host name?

Those are the questions I have about the Auto-set IP. I don't even want to list my questions for the manual config. I've checked out a lot of Linux networking how-to's, but they just tell me how I can set the network up using their programs.

How do I get the LAN set up on the older NIC? How do I use SAMBA, which I don't know how to access? Do I use internet connection sharing wizard or SAMBA or are they the same?

I'm confused, I would appreciate any help offered.

mm here are some quick tips...I guess somebody will complete this help and give you wise advice or if they don't, I'll come back a little later and write further (I'm in a small hurry now)

anyway,

1) I'd say define your own ips for your network, so that you know what the ip is if you wish to use something like SSH or anything like it. there are certain ip ranges that you can use for your home network, and here's an example that you can use:

"server" machine --> 192.168.0.1
machine n.o 2 --> 192.168.0.2
machine n.o 3 --> 192.168.0.3
etc.

so the ip's run on from 192.168.0.1 to 192.168.0.255 (in theory). check out /etc/hosts, /etc/host.conf, /etc/hosts.allow and /etc/hosts.deny. the last two files describe which machines are allowed to access the machine and which are not.

2) I'm not sure, but it might use a different driver. if it work's, there is no problem

3) DHCP means....umm how should I put it...well, it sort of "automatically gets the needed info from the network" or something like that. I'm not using it, I've never tried. I guess you can leave it blank I guess, as you said, if you use the other thingie you mentioned.

4) hostname is the name of your machine. it's basically used (for example) this way: if your machine's ip is 192.168.0.5 and some other is 192.168.0.4 and you wish to SSH into the other machine, you don't need to give 192.168.0.4 as the address, but you can use the hostname of the machine if you've added it to your hosts config file. so it's the name of the computer on the network.

5) I'm not sure....never heard? check google.com.

and, in addition: add your other machines' ip addresses into the /etc/hosts.allow file so that the connections will not be refused. then add the hostnames and ip-addresses into the /etc/hosts file, and then check that in /etc/host.conf has the following rows and in this order:

#
# /etc/host.conf
#

order hosts,bind
multi on

well, there were the quickies for your questions...I'll get back to this later if no-one else has before it (probably will, so you'll be ok).

by the way, I too built my own home ethernet between linux (and one windows) boxes without any particular "teacher", just by reading stuff on the net and in a book I had. works well. and oh, if you plan to have one machine connected to the net and the others would use that connection through the ethernet, you must use MASQUERADING in the machine that connects to the net. it uses iptables, so get the program..