Ok, here is the situation:

At work we are stuck on a SQL project due to a lack of resources from IT (as usual). We have gotten a nod from higher up to buy a cheap box and set up our own SQL system locally outside of IT. The comapny (which is a huge national comapny by the way) is running on WIN2k and we would like to grab a cheap box (sub $1000) and use linux and MySQL to do it ourselves.

I have set up and run Linux on my machine at home, but don't have the kind of technical knowledge to forsee possible problems in networking with a windows environment. My questions are these: How difficult is it to network a Linux box into a win2k system. How much support would I need from IT... let me rephrase that... what is the minimum amount of support I would need from IT (assuming that I have a few guys that really know what they're doing locally). Is it possible to run an SQL Linux box inside a Win2k network and keep it under the IT radar?

What distro of linux would work well with something like this? what tools would be useful in setting something like this up and making it as easy as possible.

thanks for all your help. I've found this community is the best resource of all.

-e

Welcome to LQ.

All you would probably need from IT is to get them to assign you a valid IP address, this lets them keep track of fixed IPs and make sure they aren't in a dhcp range and maybe make sure the physical connections are in place to support your system. If you intend to make it available throught your national organisation - ie outside your lan then it may be a bit more work and you may run into problems depending on their IP allocation etc.

What are you going to get the clients to use in order to interface with the SQL server?

Any sitro should work fine but something like redhat is probably the simplest.

The idea is that the clients will be on Win2k machines and will interface with the linux sql box via microsoft access. it will be on our local intranet. Can access get an odbc connection to the linux box?

Yes you can:
http://www.mysql.com/products/myodbc/index.html

I actually looked into last week for a similar project I am likely to be setting up in the new year but so far I haven't got as far as trying it.