With respect to
chaosmind,
netatalk is perhaps more accurately defined as an implementation of the
AppleShare stack, rather than mere
AppleTalk.
Netatalk can provide fileservice to Mac OS clients over pure
TCP/IP, negating the need for the largely defunct
AppleTalk networking stack.
FWIW, installation is an easy 2 minute job with RPM, and configuration is a snap (one additional line in /etc/modules.conf). The Linux 2.2 kernel has AppleTalk services available, and obviously already has TCP/IP. At the risk of being immodest, I have demonstrated a new netatalk installation on a virgin Linux laptop, from rpm -ivh to logging into the server via the Mac's Chooser, in under 4 minutes (and that includes inevitable typos due to the big projector screen) :-)
The excellent and very secure TurboLinux 6 and higher installs a modern Netatalk package as part of it's standard server install.
"Fearing Macintoshes is just plain dumb."
STOP PRESS
Netatalk 1.5 is out on sourceforge and man it wails! All legacy bugs squashed. Showstoppers gone. QuarkXPress and Photoshop network saves work every time! Universal NIC support. FAST!