Not necessarily, Are you using the same IP address? They must be unique.
samba may or may not be running so can not say if the crash was due to non unique net bios names.

Oh my goodness!!!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!Oh my goodness!

I can see my win98 computers on the network!!!!

Awesome!!!!

I played around with the IPV4 thing. What is that anyway?

Also, i can see win98 computers from linux, what do i need to do to see the share folders from windows

no matter what os you are using, you would need a samba-client to connect to a samba-server.
also,
you need to configure a samba-server in order for samba-clients to be able to connect to it.

edit: i misunderstood your question above... someone who knows windows will need to answer.

ipv4 is just a basic ip-address. tcp/ip networking depends on these routing addresses. before your server had no address therefore none of the clients were able to route to it.

rtmistler, you wrote

The command browsable above, what does this do exactly?

I assume you are using the file browser (nautilus) to see the W98 computers. It has a built in SMB/CIFS client. Setting up the server so the W98 computers see the linux box takes a bit more work. I believe that you already installed samba.

As suggest earlier add a share to your /etc/samba/smb.conf file
As stated the netbios names can not be the same so you might want to add
netbios name = main-1 (or whatever to de-conflict with the w98 main box in the global section of the smb.conf file)

Create the /mnt/f-drive directory and to make things a bit easier:
sudo mkdir /mnt/f-drive
sudo chmod 777 /mnt/f-drive

Browseable just makes the share visible in network neighbourhood.

Also make sure the workgroup name is the same as your W98 boxes.
Restart samba.

ok thanks for all the help. Just to clarify, i reinstalled linux mint over the ubuntu becaue one of the senior advisors said it might be easier for me to understand. i will try all the suggestions on friday as tomorrow i will be tending to a sick baby. I think i might install linux mint on my new laptop just to get more accustomed to linux,

mint is based upon Ubuntu so there should not be a lot of difference under the desktop so to speak. It is also #1 on the distrowatch.com list which probably does not mean much to you at the moment. mint is touted as a desktop distribution although you can easily install samba which is all you really need at the moment.

Report back when you get it installed.

Tldr

My suggestion though is to install the graphical version of ubuntu or one of its derivatives. Then just create a windows share using the gui. I believe this is very straight forward.

That's called HOOKED!!! Welcome to the Linux family of users...

For a guy still using Win98, you're going to love Linux cut it'll run until the machine dies...

No .... this is normal Windows behavior. I have to admit, they seemed to get rid of the BSOD in Windows7; instead they just put the whole system to sleep for about 15 minutes before it decides to work again. :)

From reading the other posts beyond this one. Great, you got the network working, and are now configuring sharing via SAMBA. And have been answered about browseable.

As far as MINT vs Ubuntu, it's already been said that they are the same (internally) just different UI's mostly. But try to stick with what you have for now and once you solve your network problem, you could then dual boot and choose whichever one you prefer better. Between Ubuntu and MINT, this problem is resolve-able and also little different between the two as far as how it gets solved. Therefore keep one distro now to get to the point you wish to be, and then vary in the future. And yes, also install the full UI version, which is the most normal case, for most of the distros you'd have to do extra to limit them to be command line. MINT and Ubuntu natively install as full UI desktops.

Curious if the class is technical, computer science, or instead you just use the files for examples/other and they really need to stay in the Windows convention. For instance, say the class is all about how to use Microsoft Word/Excel/Powerpoint. Then yeah ... Windows on all those other machines needs to stay. If the class is about web access, browsing and how to know stuff about HTML pages, or if the class is about programming, you might want to consider moving the remote stations also to Linux. Or it may be that you have a highly specific W98 application which runs the shared files, like scientific software or CAD, again that would restrict things. Still, might be worth staging possible upgrade scenarios, because I'm thinking that over time some of those old workstations may end up failing too.

Awesome!!! It's working!!It's working!!It's working!!
Now I can see the share from my win98 computers!! I thought I would have to have an actual drive partition of F: because this is how I have it set up on my current system. But i don't even have to have a partitioned drive.

It works! I'm not really sure how it works, but it works!

I started seeing the linux share on my win98 computers when I did what michaelK suggested:

Well, i feel like my question/problem was answered and solved. What do I do now? Do I close this thread out as answered? I still have a ton of other questions.
Thanks to all the ideas/suggestions. Fantastic! I can finally have a linux server! A real server on my system! Thank you so much!

Now, who and how do I pay for this advice?

You should see a "Thread Tools" button where you can mark the thread as Solved.

LQ is volunteer, people don't advise for pay, you can click to say you found someone's posting as helpful to you, that's the farthest you really can or should go.

The other questions you have, create new threads for them. And whether or not you've read the LQ Rules and guidelines on posting and how to ask questions; you've done very well. Polite, interogative, and done follow-through. Well, a teacher should understand that stuff. :)

Glad you got it set up and working.

your welcome. go to 'thread tools' at the top of the page and select 'mark thread as solved'.
create a new thread with specific questions in the appropriate sub-forum.
for all posts that you found helpful, click 'yes' under those posts.

edit: rtmistler - jinx.