...and I can't meet the November meeting, but wanted to ask three questions before then. First, I should introduce myself -- "Hi, my name is Paul, and I'll be your interrogator for the next few minutes". My background is almost all M$ although I've done a bit of UNIX, MAC, no LINUX. Good with software, less so with hardware, programming experience is old (Basic, advanced basic, fortran, cobol, dos stuff). Once programmed a menu shell program in basic and dos, but only thing recent is ASP pages. Now here's the nightmare scenario -- that's my background, and I'm going to run a Linux server for my personal low-traffic website. Likely scenario for configuration at home is: - External router dividing into website server and a second "internal" router - Internal router connecting second "test server" and fileserver, with two other PCs and a laptop Website will need database functionality to generate dynamic pages, e-mail capabilities for my domain addresses, and hosting my photo albums. No e-commerce elements expected, ever. Internal "test site" is essentially to allow me to make modifications to my website and see the changes live, without copying them over to another server first nor opening my internal server up to outside attack...and for fun, I'll use it as a file server for my home network. So on to the interrogation: A) Anybody see any reasons why I shouldn't do this on a Linux server (rather than Windoze, where I'm more comfortable but worried about security and software costs)? B) If I paid someone to configure my servers, perhaps using Debian(?), for the server hosting, database reading, e-mail installation, what would be an appropriate fee to a relative amateur? i.e. not paying a professional company to do it... C) Taking into account I'm a newbie to Linux, albeit a literate and cocky one, how difficult do you think it will be for me to do the configuration myself? Welcome any and all views! :) Poly, a soon-to-be Linux server owner