Very Newbie question

[Richard Pratt]

Good Afternoon,

I'm playing with YDL as a way to leverage some more use out of a bunch 
of older iMacs we have here at our High School.  Since, I have to 
admit, I'm also fairly new to Linux in general, I'm having difficulty 
figuring out how to set up these machines so students will be able to 
access network home directories and printers on our mostly Windows 
network. My question really is this:  Which install (desktop? 
workstation?something else?) will give kids the access they need?  Or 
are there components I need to install outside of the standards?  Any 
help will be much appreciated.

Richard Pratt