I am very new in the Linux world, but have succesfully installed Mandrake 10.0 and Fedora Core 2 with little problem on 2 spare computers at home.

However, what I am having problems with is figuring out how to access files on my Windows computer that is also on my home network with my Linux boxes.

I downloaded Samba but it seems complicated to learn.

Is there a simple program I can install on my Linux boxes that will access shares I setup on my Windows PC? I want the easiest most basic program.

Also, what Media Players for mp3, mpg, avi, CD, etc does everyone recommend for Linux?

I think i will answer your last question and leave the first part to the gurus here.

I would personally recommend xmms for mp3 as it has the same skins and functionality of winamp, and its good.

For video there is this player called Totem player which comes with mandrake 10 CD. Install it if you havent already. It plays almost anything. From mpegs to DVD. By the way these are my personal favourites but then there is a huge collection of players.

for movies
i would recommend mplayer

www.mplayerhq.hu

as far as samba is concerned
edit the file /etc/samba/smb.conf

or install the samba swat package ,i think fedora has in it

then u can edit ur samba server settings in a easy way.

regards
gaurav

for playing dvds and most movies i use xine, i also like mplayer. To listen to music i use xmms, xmms is a really good program. those three programs are my favorites.

there is also smb4k
"Smb4K is a SMB (Windows) share browser for KDE. It uses the Samba software suite to access the SMB shares of the local network neighborhood."

http://kde-apps.org/content/show.php?content=9814

Xine or Mplayer for media, Mplayer worked best for me but i cant install it under SuSE 9.1 AMD 64 for some reason.
Samba is definately the tool for M$ networking

are you wanting to be able to access Windows files from your Linux box ?
if so, you can just use mount.

this works for me to connect to Windows 2000 from FC1

mount -t smbfs -o username=myuser,password=mypassword //ip-of-windows-system/sharename /mnt/smb-mount-point

where username and password are for an account that has access to the share in windows
you can exclude the password and just use -o username=myuser and then be prompted for a password to connect

what i think will be a easiear way to mount windows shares

#smbclient -l 192.168.0.20
where 192.168.0.20 is the ip of thge win mach

then suppose u mount a share Documents of the mach

then for that do

#smbmount '//192.168.0.20/Documents' /mnt/smb

where smb is the directory where u want to mount the windows share

to unmount

#smbumount /mnt/smb

regards

realplayer 10 was release for linux... there is also helix player which is the open source verion of real

i perfer mplayer though

webmin has a good samba configuration tool too

In terms of media players for video (and indeed anything else):
The big 2 of Mplayer and Xine.
Then there's also Totem, Kaffeine, Realplayer 10, Ogle (DVD only) and many many more.
A particular favourite of mine is VideolanClient - despite the bizarre name it plays almost everything very well.

Music players:
XMMS (the winamp clone) is king.
And there are loads of iTunes-variants, JuK, AmaroK etc.

Windows Networking:
Samba all the way