OSX- Fedora network problem

[Eric Johns <eric huscarls com>]

first let me describe the setup I have.

I have an G3 ibook running 10.3.9 using an airport card which is 
connected to a Netgear router. The Desktop is running Fedora 4 and is 
connected to the router via an ethernet cable. Firewalls are turned off 
and I'm using samba, To cap this off I am rather new to Linux and 
networking.

Using the desktop I can see my home directory on the ibook and do 
everything I want (that part is great)
while on the ibook I can connect to the Desktop I can ssh, ftp with no 
problem but I can not see the home directory on the desktop. Every now 
and then I see in the Network folder an icon for the desktop computer 
but it's faded and when I click on it I get "The alias "ODEN" could not 
be opened, because the original item cannot be found" when I try to 
connect to the server with the address smb://username ipaddress/share I 
get "could not connect to server because the name or password is not 
correct" 

I have searched the net looking for an answer, but I guess the problem 
is with me and not a bug because it seems I am the only person who has 
this problem.

Any ideas on how this idiot can fix it ... :)
thanks