I hope I selected the right forum for this question. So...I have kubuntu desktop. I was wondering if I canfigure it to allow one of my laptops boot from it via the network and what do I have to do to enable it.

I do not have a server. Just to be clear on that... thanks

Yep, I reckon this is probably the right forum

You do need to have a server, but a server in this case is just a piece of software which you install on your computer and which runs like any other programme. The first step is to check if your laptop supports netboot (some other names it might be given is 'LANboot', 'boot on LAN', etc. 'PXE-boot', 'Ethernet boot'). If it doesn't, you can't boot from network.

Also, why are you booting from the network? Does the laptop not have a working CD/DVD/USB drive? Because in 95% of cases it's far far easier to boot from any of them than from network (in my experience, anyway...)

Sometimes it's even necessary first to select something like "enable boot ROM" for the network interface, then reboot again into the BIOS because in the setting for the boot order it will only show up after the reboot.

Honestly, because the desktop is having hardware issues. I needed a solution I could execute untill I replace the hardware. I do know that I could rdc or vnc to it b ut I'm looking for somethin a bit more creative to expand my knowledge.

My laptop does have said ports.
I was hoping you could give it to me as far as dektops and laptops, so that I can learn to boot on both machinces

Ah, it's very different to VNC. You won't be able to access the data on the desktop etc. It's really just the same as booting to a CD, except it finds the disk-image from the network rather than from an actual CD. If you wanted to interact with the data on the desktop then netbooting isn't going to help you, I'm afraid... I've only ever used netboot when I was trying to install an OS on a laptop whose CD drive was broken and didn't support booting from USB.

If you do still want to netboot, I *think* this was the article I used for most of my installation: http://ubuntu-tutorials.com/2007/10/...installations/. But to be honest, it was a lot of hassle and took a lot of playing with WireShark to debug the boot process, and from the sounds of it what you're after isn't actually netbooting :/

The best place to start PXE is to use a knoppix 5.x cd and simply run knoppix terminal server app. It sets up the server and all the programs and makes a bootable image in the right places. Just pxe boot a lan system.

Second choice might be to use GPXE. Might look at www.netboot.me and boot.kernel.org.