[SWLUG] Brain is not dead but needs help!

[Telsa Gwynne]

On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 03:47:07PM +0000 or thereabouts, Telsa Gwynne wrote:
> On Mon, Mar 14, 2005 at 10:18:15PM -0000 or thereabouts, Plod wrote:
> > Are there any amongst your number who feel like taking pity on me and
> > showing me how to do it on my PC?  As a life long USER of computers my
> > knowledge is flaky at best, and downright wrong most of the time.  I have
> > read and reread several learn Linux books, but have never been able to
> > repeat the tutorials on my machine.  It just does not look anything like the
> > books!
[stuff about books deleted] 
> As for showing you how to do it, what is the "it", exactly? What
> do you want to learn how to do? Is it a direct "I use these programs
> on Microsoft, what are the Linux equivalent?" sort of question? 
> Or do you want a general introduction to Linux? 
> 
> What is on your computer already? Does it have a working net
> connection? Can you burn CDs? Or do you need those to get put on
> your machine before you can do much more? 
> 
> And whereabouts are you and is it reachable on public transport? :)

This went off-list at some stage, so a quick summary: Plod is 
somewhere in Cardiff reasonably reachable on the bus; the net 
connection does work (woo); and he was interested in a general
overview of Linux. But he also specifically wanted to get Samba 
working nicely (currently the Windows boxes won't see the Mandrake 
box); get the machine to call itself by the name he wants rather 
than blah-blah-custxxx.cdif.cable.ntl.com; and once he is happy with
Linux, then later on run a website off the Linux box. 

Erm. I shall learn to write shorter sentences.

I know absolutely nothing about samba, or smbs or shares. I can
say "this is Linux and it can do this and this and this and here's
a neat trick". But it won't help with "why won't boxA see boxB?"

So: any samba-users want to add anything? 

Telsa