Hi, I recently setup ubuntu 13.04 on my hp laptop, I have a windows xp machine and a linksys router with some switches connected in between. Can someone tell me how I can have each computer resolve the other's hostname without having to make a manual entry in the hosts file on each computer? I am using putty to connect to the laptop but I need to use the ip address for everything which is setup using dhcp so this can change even though I can set the router to hold (reserve) the ip address for that machine. Any help is most appreciated. I ideally I would be able to just type in the hostname in the putty session or type ping <xphost name> from the linux laptop and have that work. Everything is working I just need to type ips addresses. I saw somewhere about setting up a local dns but I wasn't sure if I needed to actually do this and they showed something called bind9 but this looked like a lot of overhead so I thought I would ask first. Thanks so much for your help, I appreciate it.