04-04-2004, 02:37 PM

We have an old crappy Windows ME toting laptop in our basement. We only have one Mac in our house, and we'd like to put the other computer on the internet. For more stability I'd like to install Linux. We're planning on networking the 2 with a router, and I'd like to know if there are any conflicts with networking between Linux and Mac such as file systems. We will be able to transfer files between the 2, right?

04-04-2004, 02:46 PM

Networking should be easy enough, depending on things such as what ports the notebook has and what Linux distro you will use.

04-04-2004, 03:33 PM

I'll probably use Mandrake or Redhat Fedora, and I'll either be using a USB to ethernet adaptor or ethernet pcmcia card for the laptop since the modem got fried in a lightning storm.

04-14-2004, 12:38 AM

Redhat Fedora is ok but I recommend Slackware And SuSe is good too

04-16-2004, 03:19 PM

The "which distro should I use" topic has been discussed to death on various Linux forums. I don't think we should get into that in this forum.

First thing to do is to make sure whatever hardware you are going to use for networking (or anything else) is supportet in Linux. Then you need to decide what to use for filesharing. Personally I use SFTP. It's probably the easiest service to set up and secure on both OSs. Downsides are that it's not designed exactly for this purpose, there is no support in finder, and encryption kills speed.

SMB could be viable solution, though it's kinda weird to use Microsoft's protocol to network Apple and Linux.

I've never used NFS, and I'm not sure if there is GUI tools for mounting NFS shares on OS X.

I've seen an option to enable AppleTalk in Linux kernel config. I have no idea how easy/hard it is to set up. I'd quess most distros don't have it in their stock kernels.

I've never compiled kernel on RedHat or Mandrake. Some people tell not to use vanilla sources from kernel.org, but instead whatever the distro is providing.