I'm just curious about this. Can I get Ubuntu to play nicely with my Windows computers on my LAN? it would be nice if i could get it to work but it's not essential. By the way I got Gimp and Inkscape up and working the way I want, now all i have to do is get my bamboo to work and I'm set. I thank everyone for the help so far and i especially thank everyone for your patience. Computers have come a long way since the days of the VIC 20 and Tandy TRS 80.

about your tablet there is a how to on gimptalk
It is pinned in the Help forum.

you should have no any problem for your LAN, did you try

hum thinking better may be some issue to sharing files, linux may read windows files but not the contrary ,at least not without additional sw (i know there is something to allow win to do it but not sure if work only for ext2 )

anyway even that is simple to solve:
just create a NTFS partition for documents in your linux machine so everything may be available from all computers and partition (more in case you will want to reformat, you will have not to worry about back up data )

Hmm.. You are confusing accessing files on the Linux machine from a Windows machine (or vice-versa) and having files on a disk usable when whatever system is booted on that machine.

For remote access you only need to setup a Samba share or a NFS server on Linux or "share" the file on Windows and setup a Samba client on Linux. Many people just avoid the problem by using a NAS.

For same access with different OSes, modern Linux distros handle NTFS as well as FAT32.

Yes, i tried it, PC, but neither system sees the other so i have to look into it deeper. regarding my bamboo, i found the drivers for Wacom and thought i did what I was supposed to do but I guess I didn/t et it right. more looking into that too.