I'm looking at Linksys's and Zytel's powerline to Ethernet networking solutions for making a wired home network. They have a Driver CD and say that they work for Windows and MAC.

The fact is that everything comes with a CD now. My wireless Ethernet bridge that I use for Linux comes with a CD even though it is driverless. For home use, the most secure thing would be a Linux or Unix O/S wired to a router with a firewall into a cable or DSL modem.

Let's say you have a X-box, Linux box or BSD whatever. You plug in all the hardware so it is all physically connected. Will it "just work" the way a Ethernet bridge does or will nothing good happen?

well ethernet is ethernet... these driver cd's are normally just config tools and a manual. there's often what i assume to be an xml driven interface between a browser based local app and the router or other device. basicaslly stops you having to directly connect to a router... hardly a driver. so outside of having to potentially get into the device to configure it, it's not *allowed* to do anything different on the network side, as if it did, it wouldn't be ethernet anymore.

I had a pair of Netgear powerline adapters. The CDs contained the manual, and a utility to set a password on the adapter, so you could "secure" them, should there be more on the same power circuit.

There was no "driver", as such.

Cheers.