I have a XP computer which is my primary. I recently, well just today installed a old version of Mandrake Linux 6.5 I had laying on a self collecting dust on a old PII 233mhz that had to be vacummed out before I could use it.

I have my XP computer connected by 10/100 NIC to a cable modem. My broadband provider charges more for additional IP addresses. I want to hook the linux machine upto broadband as well. Currently it doesn't have a NIC in it, because I gave it to a friend never expecting to use this computer again. But now that I want to use it. I want to hook it up to broadband so I can really dig into Linux. So I don't constantly have to jump back and forth. I want to be able to access the files on my XP machine from the Linux machine.

What would be the cheapest and easiest way to do this. My conclusion has been I need a router and another NIC for the Linux computer. But I have no clue how to hook it up to the cable modem. Would I hook the router to the cable modem with ethernet cable. Then connect the outports of the router to the XP and linux computers?

Then after that, how do I set up the NIC in the Linux computer. All the experience I've had with Linux has been in free shell accounts with a local ISP and using the shell access I had when I had a website which gave it.

Is there any good books that are very basic. Windows has started to bore me and I want to try something new.

Any help would be appreciated. I've found out, it's not a unix friendly world.

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Another question is....

What would be a secure way to access my computers remotely. Where I could be at any computer anywhere in the world and I'd have total access to all my files?

personally i would opt and get a router. i have a cable modem and i use the router to recieve an ip from the ISP then the router issues my lan IP's via DHCP. its really easy and works really well.

currently i have my xp/xbox/freebsd machine online even tho my isp issued me 1 ip.

the chain works like this.

ISP -> cable modem -> router -> my computers.

if you want to go the free way you shoudl look at ipmaskerading and ipchains for linux. this will give you firewalling and software routing for your machines.

as for the last questions. check out ssh for secure remote connections.