How do I configure my red hat unix box to work with my other 4 XP professional machines. I have a router, so internet sharing is not a concern. I just want to be able to share files and printers. I am very new to this, so I don't even know how to browse the network and see what is connected. I have just barely started using Linux Red Hat 7.3, and I love what I see. Thanks in advance for your help.

to be able to use windows file and printer sharing on linux you need Samba. with samba client you can mount all the shared services on your XP machines, samba daemon lets your XP boxes to connect to shares on your linux box. remember to add entries for your other windows boxes in /etc/hosts (make it faster if you use host name instead of ip address).

I run Redhat 7.3 and love it to. Now depending on what you selected during the install, you could be missing some important packages to make the network configuration easier. First, you will definitely need the samba client and server. This was stated in an earlier reply. Once you either install it or know you already have it installed, then I would recommend installing swat and webmin. Swat comes on your install CD's, but it is not installed by default. You will have to download webmin. They are both easy to install. Once you have done that, you just use a web browser to setup the server for sharing. Webmin uses port 10000 and swat uses port 901. If you want to browse the network per say, you can setup LISA in your KDE control panel to setup browsing of the windows machines from within Konqueror. Once you set that up, issue the command lisa in a terminal. Also, remember to setup the windows networking tab in KDE control panel. You need to supply your name & password. This is all assuming you are using KDE. I know it’s a bit lengthy, but I hope this helps! Good Luck!