Name resolution on home LAN?

Is there an easy way to allow my other computers to resolve my hostname over the network without having them edit their hosts files or their DNS settings? Some of the computers are on Windows.

Solution 1:

To resolve Avahi hostnames, other computers should have libnss-mdns installed.

Another option, if you are the network administrator is to distribute a private DNS address by DHCP (I your computers are configured by DHCP). For a small network, dnsmasq is good combined package (DNS+DHCP). It allows you to serve simply your /etc/hosts to the network.

Solution 2:

In mixed network environments you can do this with name resolutions from Avahi/Zeroconfig that would resolve in Mac-OS as well as in Windows (when Bonjour is running). See also this answer.