First of all i want to say hi to all of you guys.

As you can clearly see by the title of this thread i'm a COMPLETE newbie on this linux things.
I've dnl the distro from Mandrake 9.2 and burnt the ISOs to cds. Then i,ve redimensioned my 40Gb partition (winXP installed on it), rebboted the comp and started to install Linux. I want to say that installing it was like taking a candy from a baby. It worked just fine and after some CD switches i got mandrake installed at first atempt! I gess i'm lucky...

So far so good. But after installing (i got the LILO working well and can dual boot) started my problems...
To be sincere the problems aren't due to Hardware/software issues (fortunately). To be realy sincere they are due to my almost complete (to not say complete) ignorance about linux.
So i'm asking for help. I really need to understand how linux works... The basics... How to install progs, how to uninstall them, how to manage the OS, things like that.

I would also want to put some small questions. I'm managing a small network of 30 comps connected to a Win2000 cluster with 2 nodes. I plan to switch to linux on the workstations. The cluster needs to stay in Windows enviroment since it doesn't belong to us and i can't reinstall it (i wouldn't know how to do it to tell the truth...)
Every user as to access on the network several things: the printers, one public folder, one private folder of each user, the mailbox on a exchage server and some folders that are accessed by some progies...
I've realized allready the most of this is done through Samba and winbind (to login to the windows network...). The problem is how is this done? 'm afraid of doing something that could damage the cluster...

Another issue is that i've read that ntfs partitions are read only... If they are and i can't work with them from linux that's a great handicap on my plans on abandon windows and UPGRADE to linux...

Well for now i won't put more questions... many more will arise for sure but then i'll come here again and ask for your help... (if you'll be so kind and give it to me...)

Thanks in advance

Welcome
I wouldn't try upgrading your server to Linux until you are very familiar with it. Some get it sooner and some later, but it's going to be more challenging for you to use and understand how Linux works than it took with windows. Take your time and learn from your mistakes. If you try to rush it, Linux will make you bang your head against a brick wall in frustration... :x

As far as NTFS is concerned, you can copy from it, but you cannot write to it from Linux, at least, not that I'm aware of.

While learning Linux, make Google your co-pilot. I'm not sure it's possible in this day and time to learn Linux without Google.

Let's say you want to know how to install a rpm. Just Google...

.rpm mandrake how install

or something like that.

Mandrake comes with a really good package management system , you should try. From the menu just go to Configure-Mandrake Control Center-Software management- install new software, and type in the software you think you want to install.