its good to know all of your network information, your hardware info(vid card name, monitor name) and specs like that...http://linux.org is a good resource.
ive tried to use solely linux, but for me it doesnt work...im a DOS person so the file system is a lot different. but what i have fooled with, linux handled it fine. it ran a lot more efficient than windows did. i had no problem setting it up to dual boot w/ win98se, but i never mixed it w/ nt4.

good luck though