Linux and Windows XP Workgroups
 

Hi,
I am trying to connect through ethernet an old pc with Linux (now Mandrake, but I will try Debian and Suse asap) in a Win XP Pro Workgroup.
How can I do ? Thanks to everybody

:)

Samba is what you need to connect Linux to Windows, NFS is what you need for Linux to Linux.

As a tip, I just helped a friend of mine set his LAN up, he was having real problems as far as no connection and what not, and it all came down to his router and firewalls. so these are the steps I would take.
1.Configure IP's(local network zone such as 192.168.1.1 through 192.168.1.254)
2.Configure router and/or firewalls to allow traffic to and from machines.
3.Make sure samba is installed and configured correctly, and smbd is set executable.
4.Make sure samba can start through inetd.conf or whatnot.
5.Make sure the workgroups are the same, as in same workgroup for nix machine and windows(this can be changed within smb.conf)
smb.conf by default will need edited...find in /etc/samba/smb.conf.new....this is where workgroup is changed...this is very well documented so it is kinda hard NOT to understand.
6.Add user to samba to allow file access...this should(imho)be the same as your user name......as in
smbpasswd -a usernamehere

that will create a user with a pass......
Sorry if I missed something or posted wrong.

I did a little how on setting up samba for a workgroup, it might help you out.

http://www.hclg.org/smb.html