OK, I've got Debian (squeeze) installed on one box as a server and on my desktop as a dual boot with WinXP. I installed the LAMP package and CUPS, though they will need some tweaking.

My question is, I would now like to install SAMBA so I can share files between my desktop and the server (using the server as a desktop until I get a second desktop up). Do I install SAMBA on both desktop and server or just on one or the other?

It seems that many packages/apps don't really tell you which machine to install these programs on, the server or the desktop. Same goes for CUPS and others like PhpMyAdmin...

Thanks for your help.

Samba is a server application, so it goes on whatever machine is acting as the server. The SMB client-side tools should already be included on the client OS.

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As said above Samba is a server applications but you put it where it will fit the need most. Put it where you plan to maintain file storage for your windows/linux machines. It will probably be best to put it on Your LAMP Server.

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Thanks, guys. Is there a rule of thumb about where apps are generally supposed to be installed? I figure usually on the desktop, right?

Thanks again.

If I have understood your question correctly, there is no such rule of thumb. Install apps where you want to use them. In the case of Samba, the directories you want to share are presumably on the server so that's where Samba has to be installed, to make them available over the network to the Samba client computers which see them as Windows shares (in the jargon: CIFS, previously known as SMB networked file systems).

EDIT: when your desktop is running Debian it would be better served by sharing the same directories that you are sharing by Samba by NFS. Samba is for Windows and Windows file systems do not integrate well with Linux systems -- file naming systems and permissions are different so there is inevitably a kludge when running Samba.