Mmm as for the Linux networking you may try to see the howto on NFS (network file system) on
www.tldp.org, basically what it is, is a shared partition, directory, etc on a remote computer that you can mount on your local computer and work with it as if it was part of your local file system. On the other hand if you are to network with any Windows machines, you may try out SAMBA, just mind you that the scheme under which SAMBA works is in the server-client framework, so a machine will have to be a server to which other clents connect, this server may also be a client into the client's shares (in this case the client is also a sever). Likewise check the samba howto on
www.tldp.org