how to communicate with windows

[johnhagen]

hi guys,

i have 2 computers one of them ubuntu installed and on the other one windows(xp) installed.how they can communicate?like file sharing,printer sharing etc.?wat kind software or what i need?

thanks.

[oz]

i have 2 computers one of them ubuntu installed and on the other one windows(xp) installed.how they can communicate?like file sharing,printer sharing etc.?wat kind software or what i need?

Check out Samba to see if it will suit your needs:

Samba - opening windows to a wider world

[johnhagen]

yeap thats it thanks/

[Draciron]

There are several ways. Depends on what your doing and how often you are doing it.

If you are sharing files many times dailly then Samba is likely your best bet. You can share dirs on the Linux box and then auto mount them on the windows machine. The downside is it's not the most secure way of doing things. There is also a bit of work in setting it up. Most distros you will need to punch a hole in the firewall. You'll have to install Samba if it's not installed and create Samba users.


If you only want to move files a week I suggest using WinSCP. It installs quite easily and quickly. Lets you move files back and forth quite easily and is very low overhead. Ubuntu for some odd reason doesn't install the SSH daemon by default. So you'll need to install that, other than that it's a no pain no upkeep solution.
Ubuntu Linux OpenSSH Server installation and configuration
Remember edit your ssh.d config file to prevent root login. That is a VERY important security consideration. You will also want to install something like banip to ban people who try to brute force attack your machine.

The most complex is to actually control one or the other machine through various software. Usually through an SSH tunnel for security. redesktop is prob your best bet for controlling your windows machine from Linux. There are software packages which claim to securely allow you to remotely control Linux. It's a bit slower but if your comfortable with a command line I'd recomend using SSH and just running individual apps instead of the whole desktop. I am unaware of a reliable free secure way for windows machines to remote desktop a Linux box. Others might have good suggestions.