There's nothing quite as humbling as using Linux for the first time; I'm sure of it.
Anyway, I've got some dumb questions to ask; I've been pulling my hair out for a few days. At least I was smart enough to scour the documentation for most of my problems, but these have me stumped.
1. I know how to compile new programs; or, at least the basic configure && make && make install process, but how do I recompile a program that was included on my distro disc? I need to recompile mplayer to install new codecs, for example.
2. How do I get my Linux machine to talk to my Windows XP machines on the network? I've installed all the Samba packages; even the ones I don't think I need, but I don't know how to get it to use them; on a verbose boot, it says 'Mount SMB file system: Unused'.
Anyway, feel free to pass this around the office for a laugh, but thanks in advance for any answers you can give me, too.
