[Nottingham] Network neophyte

[Josh Lock]

> The whole thing runs appallingly slowly and I daresay is infected with
> Lord knows how much malware of various types.

Been there with my fiancees stepdads office...

> One option would be to reinstall Windows on the machines, but I am
> looking at the possibility of converting them all to a desktop-friendly
> version of Linux such as Mandrake or Fedora.

If you want to keep windows for some reason try lavasoft adaware and
the free AV solution from Grisoft to heal them a bit

> My question is - how simple would it be to set up networking? We don't
> want anything grand, just some shared directories and possibly also
> printer sharing. Will it all just work "out of the box" with each PC
> picking up its IP address from the DHCP server in the ADSL box. Or
> would I need to do a lot of tweaking (which would probably be beyond
> me)?

Pretty simple!
I just installed SuSE 9.1 at the weekend and you can set all of that
up from the GUI in minutes!
Tell the OS to use DHCP during install and it will find your ADSL
boxes DHCP server.
Install Samba and use the YAST gui to set up sharing all home dirs on
a computer, just certain directories on a computer, printers etc.

Very easy if all of your hardware is supported by SuSE. All mine was
(and its all newish gear. MoBo and GFX card less than a month old).

I imagine Mandrake, Fedora etc would be similar but I know SuSE 9.1
can do it and can loan out the 5cd professional set if necessary.

Cheers

Josh