My workplace uses Winserv 2000, I believe. If I want to connect to the internet, do I need to use Samba? (I have installed Debian on my laptop.)

Answer to myself (please correct me if Im wrong=) I dont think so.

We have dhcp and dns servers. I can ping the gateway IP as well as the dhcp assigned IP on my own computer so I assume that my configuration works. However, I can't ping anything outside of the network. When I use Windows XP (same IP address), everything works just fine. Firewall issue? (although I don't think we have one...I work in Japan by the way and from what I can tell we don't use a firewall here I work...yeah, I tell them that that is crazy. Blaster toasted our network etc). I would like to have some idea of what software I should use, what config files I should check so that when I ask one of the other employees to help me out, I don't waste too much of his time.

Any suggestions? Or what should I ask about the network here to help you help me?

If your network uses a proxy server, you will need to enter the details as you would in Internet Explorer. As long as all you want is to connect to the internet, you should not need to use Samba.

In other words I should enter the proxy into the menu for my web browser of choice? (In this case firefox)

I did try that and suddenly I had a menu pop up asking me to enter a username and a password which doesn't happen in (bleh) windows. Could this be the proxy server asking for proper verification? (for pcs not using windows?) That seems a bit funky to me. Anyway, thanks for the hint. I guess I will have to ask someone at work if I need to enter a username and password. Unless of course you have some other morsel of advice

The username and password is your authentication for the proxy server. If you don't normally se it, I would guess that it's your normal LAN userid and password.