OK, OK, the title is a bit cryptic and perhaps a bit of a stretch. It refers to Linux running a Samba server. Geddit?
After one of my sons killed their old 333MHz PC by switching the voltage selector whilst it was powered on(!!) I told them they couldn’t have it back unless he shelled out for a new power supply. Of course the lure of toys saw to it that it was mine again! Of course this meant I had to splash out for the new power supply myself. 
Suitably resurrected, I set about finding a Linux distribution (distro) which would suit my purposes. After trudging around DistroWatch I stumbled across Damn Small Linux which packs a fully functional desktop into less than 50Mb! It also runs directly off CD and that turned out to be its downfall for my particular needs. Whilst it supported methods of installing to your hard drive I struggled to make it remember stuff and the documentation available online was sparse. Besides which, it was aiming to be a lightweight desktop system and not the server I was looking for. While looking for more documentation, I came across another site with a list of distros. That site was the LWN Distributions List.
LWN has a list of 510 different distros!!! The beauty of this list is that each distro is named and a small blurb follows which tells you what is different about it. After some time trawling through this I came across a winner. SLAMPP was billed as “designed to be used as an instant home server”. Perfect!
First up, SLAMPP was designed to run from CD also and in that role is quite clever. It was fairly simple to install to my hard disk but then the challenges started. Because it is designed to run anywhere, it is set up to grab a dynamic IP address through DHCP. This was unsuitable for me because I want to run an FTP server off it also and that requires a fixed IP address for my router to use.
Well, I learnt the hard way. After much Googling and many trial and error attempts I finally realised the problem. I had to stop believing in magic and actually understand what was going on. Herein lies the principle trouble with Linux. There are standards, you see. Lots of them! It would seem that most people do things the same way, but they don’t have to. There I was busily editing the rc.inet1.conf file with all the right bits and failing to realise that although the file was provided as standard with the distro, and appeared to be configured as one would expect for DHCP – it wasn’t actually used anywhere! Being a total noob and flumoxed by the basic syntax of calling another script I took the bull by the horns and hard coded directly into rc.inet1. It worked. Yay!
Next was getting the Samba server working. SLAMPP comes with a nifty web interface for administering the myriad of servers provided, so instead of struggling with command lines and editors you get, well, a GUI command line really. You see, all the configurations are largely without explanation and I found it almost as easy to edit the files directly (which you can at least do for most servers directly from the web interface). Well I fired up the Samba again after setting what I thought would be a good config and went upstairs to see if the (Unix based) Mac could see it. It sure could. Success!
I headed back downstairs to my (current) PC and tried the same. Nothing. Zip. Nil. Nada. After about half an hour of frustration the ‘Doh!’ moment arrived. My PC firewall has a trusted zone. I had just spent many hours getting the new server outside of that zone by fixing an IP address. Sigh! A quick firewall entry later and everything magically worked!
Next challenge is to get the FTP server to do what I want it to.