Righto, I have noticed I may have come acoss a little anti Linux recently, so I reluctantly decided to install Fedora Core 4 on my Dell Optiplex 620 (apparently a bad decision trying linux on Dell's).
Just my luck the first time round I got all kinds of errors and it would not boot because the Kernal was apparently panicing, but, determined to get my money's worth, I tried installing "everything" again.
Much to my surprise, it worked, and when booting, the only thing that fails is "SmartD" or something, I could check, but I don't think it matters.

Anyways, at first I had a bit of trouble working out the network stuff, then Finally I got my good desktop machine recognising, but not my laptop for some reason(which is set up identically to my desktop, apart from it being a laptop, it has the same OS, service pack and what not)
So now, after some screweing around on the windows side of things (because I don't know how to change much in Linux yet, now I cant see either machine.

Does anyone have any networking tips for someone like me with limited Linux experience?
My internet connection is on my laptop so I want to be able to use it from my Linux machine eventually, any kind of connection between my laptop and the linux machine would be nice though.

I have installed LinNeighborhood, but it seems pretty damn useless, and not very user friendly.

My ultimate goal is to have the linux machine set up as a server(pretty sure that's possible) only because Microsoft Windows server 2003 can be costly and pretty advanced. I want it to dish out my internet and eventually host some multiplayer games, such as UT2004 and the rest that have linux capabilities.

<font color=ggffcc>Linux in any flavor is a 'learning' event. When running Linux I do not engage the network functions, and all of my network is stand alone within M$. Fedora is not a flavor I have experience with. Sometimes, proprietary machines dislike running different apps. All they need is a little persuading, coaxing, and possibly a bit of coercing to have everything turnout just right. Keep an eye on your MB, and CPU temps, sometimes they may or may not report correctly, or may increase slightly when read outside of the Wintel kernal configuration.

As with all of the Linux series, there should be a Fedora newsletter, and a use group with forum. In my experience on any of the forums as a NewB, you are not treated as such, and get very useful information. Have also seen 'Linux training' at some of the sites as well.

Yes Linux provides a very strong server application, and should fit your needs quite well.

Your Dell 'SmartD', If memory is correct, that is the 'secret hidden door' for Dell to access your Dell product from the remote. That was the first thing deactivated on the spousal units rig when the base line warranty expired. There is another one as well, but is evading me at the moment.

Good luck, have fun, learn all that you can, and welcome to the 'Other Side'.</font>


--------------------
http://www.danasoft.com/sig/FelixonTheProwl.jpg

What kind of server do you want? FC4 is full graphic with lots of stuff you don't need to run a server. Unless you want to do stuff the graphic way it could be better, especially for security, to have as little applications installed as possible, so no X.

What do you mean by networking and getting things recognized? Is it with samba or just that you can ping to machines and get the internet working?

Don't dell use a proprietary netword card? If so, life is about to get a little tricky, though you should be able to find a fairly complete guide somewhere.

I've got Red Hat on my Linux server here, and it's really a piece of cake. Just put in the CDs, installed, and away we went.

I do have a bit of Unix and networking background, so I was a couple of steps ahead of you in that regard.

Now... how are you trying to see other machines? I can think of two ways: by name, or by IP address.

If you access by name, you need to know where the other machine is. This is done in the hosts file, which is located in /etc on your Linux box and %windows%/system32/drivers/etc on your late-model Windows box. It's elsewhere in Win98... and on your Windows box, make sure the other machine is not the last line in the file. Sometimes Windows fails to recognize the last entry in the file.

The entry in hosts contains the name and the IP address it corresponds to. And I just realized this is going to get a *lot* more complicated, so rather than try to explain everything I know about networking, Linux, and Windows just so I can be corrected, let's narrow the focus and get back to this:

How are you trying to see the other machines, and what exactly is happening when you try to access them?

A quick and easy walkthrough which might be a bit simple here

And a more thorough one here. You can probably skim the first part as your distro will most likely have done all that for you.

<span style="color: lightblue">The Optiplex might be different, but my Inspiron has always worked well for networking, and I've had... *counts*... Ubuntu twice, Gentoo once, and Linux From Scratch twice.

Jarrad: Possibly look around in /etc (or if you prefer, the various config utilities) for anything to do with networking. If you can't even get internet, it is most likely either your network card not working (unlikely in a 'Just Works' distro like Fedora Core or Ubuntu), or it giving you a static IP when you want DHCP (or the other way around).
EDIT: Also try installing Samba (might already be in), and running 'smbtree'. It should give you a list of all the Windows shares on the network. But I have doubts that that will work before internet is.

[ 10-02-2005, 09:03 PM: Message edited by: LennonCook ]