Thinking of having some fun

[EmanonCow]

I'm thinking of dropping some cash and buying some hardware to set up a server to dink around with the source code of EQEmu.

I'm relatively sure that you don't need much in the way of CPU to run a server.

How much hard drive space to run a server?

How memory heavy is an EQEmu server?

How bandwidth heavy is an EQEmu server (per client)?

Should I go Windows or Linux? I'm biased towards Linux, because I already have a Windows box (laptop).

Technical background:
I'm reasonably computer savvy, but I haven't admin'd a non-toy Linux system before.

I do know my way around a unix command prompt, and I can program in C++/C/perl/python/batch/tcsh/bash/etc.

I am competent enough around hardware to put a computer together from OEM parts, but my response to a non-functional component is "toss it".

I did some small amounts of programming in InfomixSQL a long time ago, but never any admin of an SQL system. So with a touch of refresher, I could find every X in the database using selects and joins, but I have never installed an SQL database.

Other considerations:
I might use the box as a file server in addition to being an EMU server. My current system is a laptop, and data storage on a laptop is crampt and expensive...

Any advice on the specs of a system to buy? Any advice on if I should go Ubuntu or Windows XP/Vista?

(I put this in the Windows forum, because there is no forum for "general support questions about both Windows and Linux, and the Windows forum has a more recent post. )