09-15-2004
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Join Date: Sep 2004
Last Activity: 11 March 2008, 1:33 AM EDT
Location: Kent, UK
Posts: 28
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Thanks for the suggestions...Seems like everyone has their own favourite, though I bet they'll all do the simple tasks I need.
I installed ClarkConnect on the suggestion of a friend which had a super easy wizard at the front end and recognised all my hardware correctly, however under the "stand-alone" option I chose I couldn't fingure out how to get a bash promt, let alone filesharing & samba. All I get is the DNS config screen, even the Help command doesn't work, apparantly I don't have permission.."Directory Broswing is not allowed!"
I chose stand-alone as I didn't really want any internet bits installed, no proxy, smtp, ftp, http servers etc. Just a box to load up with files that my XP PCs and SliMP3 devices can read.
I have been downloading Fedora, but low-level of stability doesn't sound like my thing so I'll get SUSE instead, apparantly the latest build is quite recent and has some modern touches.
I undertood from my research so far that Slackware is great if you know what you're doing, but less than ideal for the beginner. Is this the case? I'm definitely a beginner, less than 4 hours total Linux experience.
Also, I think I've mis-understood what SAMBA is, I thought it enabled you to install NTFS partitioned drives in your Linux machine and have them served to the network. Having read a bit further I now think that it merely allows Linux volumes to be seen as if they are NTFS partitioned drives. Is this correct?
If so, how straight forward is it to add another HDD everytime the current one gets full? I'm wondering whether I should maybe give up on Linux, but then I'm enjoying the learning experience so I'll persevere a little longer.
Thanks again,
Mark.