How do I setup a home network? I'd like to share a printer and a dialup internet connection between two boxes, one with windows and another with linux. What hardware, and software are required?

If you only intend to have 2 machines you just need 2 network cards and an RJ45/Cat5(e) Crossover cable. If you want to have capacity to easily add more machines then you will need a hub or switch as well as a network card and RJ45/Cat5(e) Straight through cable for each PC.

If both computers already have 10/100 cards in them, all you will need is a cat 5 cable. My personal preference would be to put the modem into the linux box and to connect to dialup with it and then share to the MS one, but you can do it either way. Be prepared for it to take a little while to set up, as there are always snags.

You can put the printer on either box and just share it.

The specifics will depend upon which version of MS you have and which linux distribution. Setting up the linux computer will involve things like samba (to share files) and cups (to share printer) dhcp and dns (to provide the internet connection to windows). On the windows side, set up the computer to use dhcp and then add the remote printer from the linux box and open up any shares you want to provide to your linux computer. You can add samba shares as well, and 'map network drive' so they show up in explorer like an additional hard drive.

There is a lot of little things to watch for (like firewalls, using the same workgroup, server ip address), but you can get it started and then repost here if you have any problems. Depending upon your distribution, the setup can range from a very intuitive GUI process to editing text files.

I think the stright through cable and hub may be the best way to go as it will allow for expansion. Who knows, I just might want to bash together a dumb terminal for the workshop someday. The OS'es in question would be (will be) win98 and
Fedora core1 (currently RH 7.3). My next question now is what NIC's and hubs work best (read least amount of fuss) in
linux?

I usually use a Realtek card based on the RTL-8139C chip. They have always worked fine for me.