I run xp home on one computer, and red hat 8 on another. I have a cable connection going from the cable modem to a hub. I have my xp and my red hat plugged into the hub. xp is connected fine, but I cannot even activate my red hat NIC. it tries at start-up, then it tries to ping, but it gets 100% loss and fails. I tried doing it manually and I get an error that says "could not activate this device. If I plug my red hat machine straight into the cable modem, it connects fine. This is the first time I've tried anything with a linux-involved network. Any help is greatly appreciated.

In this situation, you can't use a hub.
If you have DHCP on your winXP and your Linux, you will get an IP conflict.
Two computers can not share the same IP.

The easiest setup for a home network is:
Cable Modem <---> Linux <---> winXP
Or
Cable Modem <---> Linux <---> Hub <---> winXP

In both cases, the Linux computer has two network cards
and is acting as a router and firewall.
To set up, take a look at this thread.
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=82005