Hi List, I have recently installed the "hoary hedgehog" version of Ubuntu (5.0x) and am really impressed with the distribution and would like to make it my everyday desktop OS. I am having a problem, however, accessing files that are on a home-network server after I have opened an application. When I used a SuSE distribution and opened similar applications (Open Office, a text editor, e.g.) there is a side bar "wrapper" thing that has a few major places to start from, including "network". I really would like to know if I can get that functionality using the Ubuntu distribution. Network (not sure what's relevant): --A dsl connection to a Linksys router (trusted network, not-sesitive data). --Fixed IPs. --File Server is SuSE 9.2 Pro, NIS Server, NFS Server, Samba Server. --A couple of windows machines (need samba). --Ubuntu linux 5.04 on IBM Netvista (P4 256MB).. What I have done: --Installed Ubuntu from the Hoary Hedgehog CD. --Noticed that network browsing "just worked" right away, meaning I can go to Places-->Network Servers and open documents. This is great. --Tried to cheat and created shortcuts to these network places into my home directory. The applications tell me they are "not a folder". --Tried to install NIS and NFS packages to get the clients, but got caught up on the NIS "you haven't finished yet" part of it. --Noticed that both NIS and NFS services statuses have question marks instead of red or green circles in the services admin tool. --Found out I could do "sudo mount remote_server_ip:/remote_home/user/folder /local_home/my/folder" and get the functionality I wanted. Tried to put this in .bashrc file but get the "you must be root" error for each line. Specific Questions: --I don't think I know enough about networking to ask the right technical question. --I would like to hear constructive comments on what I've done. --I'd like to hear from anybody who has an idea of how I can best make use of the fileserver I have (which I'm very happy with and don't want to change) when I'm using desktop applications in gnome. thanks for reading, KB