Newbie Question

[Brian Densmore]

> Please bear with me all I'm brand new to Linux, so I'm going 
> to be asking a
> lot of stupid questions.
A teacher of mine once said "A question is only stupid for the first 15
seconds".

> 
> I'm going to be loading Mandrake 8.1 on my system at home.  I 
> need to know
> how to get it networked with Windows machines so that they 
> can access shares
> on each other.
Install Samba and configure it. It has a GUI configure tool, use it,
it's good.
If you have questions that Samba doesn't answer, just ask. I haven't
used it in years though, so someone else on the list would probably be
more useful.

> 
> Also, can Linux recognize any Windows(DOS) file systems, and 
> if so, which
> ones?
Yes. Read and write all except NTFS. Read and (dangerous write) NTFS.

Enjoy,
Brian