I have decided to make the big change from windows to linux at home. This involved switching over about 5 computers from windows to SuSE 9.3, it worked very well.

My problem is, I know nothing about linux networking. Nothing at all. I have been trying to set it up so all the computers are on the network. Idealy I would like it so that whenever you click a little "view network" icon it will show all the computers on the network and then when I click the names of them show me all the folders that have been exported, I would also really like to keep with the dhcp system that I have now running with a smoothwall router/firewall thing.

At the moment the best I can do is get the whole thing working rather clumsily on Ip's and Nfs. Say, have a folder called /network and then have all the computers as folders in there and mount every exported folder individually. Although this works, i would really like to not rely on a machine always keeping the same Ip, i'd rather my router take care of all that, and I would rather be able to see what computers are on the network more easily.

In Yast I have tried setting up domain names and all that, but it never works.
ping 192.168.0.24 would work, but if I did ping downstairs.network.net it won't.

I am thinking that what I need is a combination of Nfs and Nis, but what I need is a simple spoon-feeding tutorial about how to set it up and get in running the way I want it to get running, and is it possible to get it running like that with NIS if I don't have a computer that can be always up and acting like a server.

I have tried extensively searching these forums/website for an answer and only found the tut about a "Simple LAN" in the tuts section, but that doesn't work because I keep getting host name problems "Invalid host" etc and I can find nothing on google that assumes that you arnt an uber tekheaded computer admin.

Basically what I am asking is 1. Is there something really basic to do with networking I have overlooked or 2. Can I have some links to some newbie tutorials about getting nfs working well.

Thanks in advance

Is this what you are looking for?
http://www.linuxgazette.com/issue28/journeay.html

Hope it helps.

Rick

If you are using SuSE you probably have KDE. In KDE you can just type in konqueror address bar:
fish://user@computer/ and browse other computers using SSH service. This is very basic and does not need any configuring. Ideal for home networking.

You can view configured computers and their network services with:
lan:/
You just must have lisa daemon running.

Very simple and no directory server needed.

ralvez: The link you posted doesn't acually help me as such, It just goes behind the theory of linux networking, wich is good but a bit uneeded atm, but I read through it and learn't quite abit, Thanks

Sohni: Thanks for the suggestion, I will try it once I boot up linux again on my main computer (Sigh 3ds Max 7 doesn't have alinux port yet).

I tried that fish thing and it sort of works, but its not what I was looking for as you have to remember the name of every single coputer, and I do not know how to start the lisa deamon, could someone please help.