One of things I like best about modern Linux distros is the superior ability to create and browse a Windows network. Not only is it faster, easier and more fun. But when using something like the Xandros file manager, mounting the shares you want is a snap!

On a network of just Windows machines, connecting to file shares is a fairly easy process: just click on the “My Network” or “Network Neighborhood” icon, click on a nearby server or workstation with a file share, and away you go.

However, on a network of Linux and Windows machines, connecting a Linux box to a Windows server can still require some manual configuration to get file sharing between the two operating systems working just the way you want it to.

KDE 3.x has some nice, built-in, multi-protocol network browsing features, but, unfortunately, chances are that your Linux distribution doesn’t enable or configure those features automatically. So, this month, let’s dive into KDE and get connected.
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Getting Going

For the purposes of this article, let’s assume that you have a distribution with KDE 3.2, such as Fedora Core 2 or SuSE 9.1. (However, if you’re using a really new distribution, like Fedora Core 3 or SuSE 9.2, that ships with KDE 3.3, the instructions presented here should suffice, albeit with very minor changes.)

The first thing you want to do is make sure the SAMBA (Windows networking services) and LISa (network browsing service) packages are installed on your computer. To verify this, pull up Konqueror as root and change to the /etc/init.d/ directory. If you see files named smb and lisa, you’re good to go.