I'm an old windows hack. and am new to linux, well sort of.. have tried a few times in the past to complete a decent setup...
so far i have mandrake 8.0 setup ok and connected to the net by DSL, ok so far. problem i'm having is that a win98 box i have hooked to it by a hub.. does not "see or ping" the linux box, BUT the linux box can see and connect to the win98 box.
i'm guessing that it is something wrong in the way i have the internal-lan NIC configured.
now since this linux box is ment to be used as a firewall/gateway.. this creates a SMALL problem.
linux: 10.0.0.1 / 255.255.255.0
win98: 10.0.0.2 / 255.255.255.0

"ANY" help will be great..

You probually have iptables or ipchaines running. Got the mandrake control center and stop them.