Leland gave you some great information, but I just wanted to add. If you want to try linux, for free, you can always download an ISO of a BOOTABLE from a linux flavor's web site. I prefer www.slackware.org , the OS is free to install and play with.

It is very easy to dual boot a machine, with Windows and Linux using either LILO or Windows2k dual boot capabilites.

If you install and decide to use the Apache web server, the most popular choice of linux users, there are way's to run ASP pages w/ a particular Apache Module, but for speed of development and easy of use. I would suggest taking a look at the PHP scripting language. It is one of the easiest to pick up, because of its simliarities to Java and C, and allows for quick development because of the large amount of resources available.

There are great samples scripts at freshmeat.net for PHP, perl, etc, for linux machines. You will need to get a database on the linux machine, either MySQL or PostGres, both available free, depending upon your needs. But you can use the linux machine for web servering, and it can connect to a MS SQL server quite easily.

I would suggest you really look into Slackware flavor of linux, because it is, I believe, easier to configure and get it to do what you want then RedHat.

Morgan Everett