network setup question

[tom_d]

in my house I have:
an xp desktop and an xp laptop

I just had to replace hdd / reinstall xp on the xp desktop. When finished, it took me about 10 seconds to 'see' back and forth between the two xp machines, drag and drop files, share printer, all that sort of stuff

in my house I also have:
a feisty desktop and a feisty laptop
I've spent I don't want to know how many hours trying to do the same with my two feisty machines- in fact, I'm now on my third generation of Kubuntu and in two years, I've NEVER been able to make it work

there has to be an easier way. The "help" I've found on the net is sorta a lot like eating bits of broken gyproc ...

anyone have a resource that can help me out here?

[Snowhog]

Re: network setup question

Networking Feisty.

[tom_d]

Re: network setup question

Networking Feisty.

it worked!
thanks much
but omfg ... what a process! I gotta tell you, if I was just Norman Normal computer user looking into a Windows alternative I'd have stuck with Windows ...

[Snowhog]

Re: network setup question

Great!

There are surely other guides that may have been more 'new user' friendly. But, sometimes working with something more than the basics leads to better understanding of what is being done.

Anyway, I'm glad the link I found was helpful.

[tom_d]

Re: network setup question

sometimes working with something more than the basics leads to better understanding of what is being done.

I don't have a clue what I did: there's not a word of explanation- just "type this Klingon here". I could go read the man pages, but that's just more Klingon imho.

In Windoze there's a button to push: "Turn on File and Printer Sharing" right-click an icon, click a radio button, give it a name. Done. I assume everything else happens via a script or piece of code that gets invoked.

As much as I-my-own-self agree with "working with something more than the basics leads to better understanding of what is being done", the overwhelming majority of users in whatever os don't need "a better understanding of what is being done", don't want "a better understanding of what is being done": they just want it to work and get scared away when forced into "a better understanding of what is being done".

$.02

[Fintan]

Re: network setup question

they just want it to work and get scared away when forced into "a better understanding of what is being done".

To a point you are right. But if I remember correctly getting networking to just "work" in xp-home (which the majority of people get installed by default when buying a machine from a oem) is quite a daunting task. especially if you know nothing about networking, much less windows networks. Finding a decent support how-to or asomeone to help in general is well.....

[Snowhog]

Re: network setup question

Every user is of course, unique. For me, when confronted with a need, and not having the knowledge to get it done, and having tried 'every way I know,' prefer the 'do it this way and it will work' approach. But that said, I try my best to then understand how what I did solved the problem. Almost a backwards engineering type of approach.