Shared disks

[johan buys]

I've downloaded a copy of Ubuntu linux and I am very impressed with it,
but I do however have a major issue with the system:

1) I don't have access to my windows and other linux disk drives, which
every other linux system can easily access from the file:/mnt/
directory.

2) My first login was hard, because the user names where not visible (I
do however feel more secure in your ubuntu, Debian type linux)

The first issue I would like to have resolved soon, because all my data
is stored on a FAT32 partition.  Or else I'll install some other linux
distribution which shares data from and to windows as I have done before
installing Ubuntu linux.

Regards

Johan