I've got two buildings that are connected by a single Gigabit fiber connection.

My current plan is to put a managed switch in each building, setup 4-5 VLANs, and then trunk them across fiber connection.

Now I'm trying to figure out the best way to setup routing between the VLANs. I'm on a very limited budget.

Here's my questions:

1. I realize that I can setup VLAN routing by using Layer 3 managed switches. Would I only need 1 layer 3 switch? Could I get by with just one layer 3 switch to do the routing and then use a layer 2 switch for the other managed switch?

2. I've read a bit about using a Linux machine as a VLAN router. This is very appealing as it would save me a LOT of money. If I'm right, it looks like I would setup a trunk from one of the managed switches to the Linux machine and then setup VLAN routing in Linux? What are the performance implications? The managed switches would be Gigabit.

Thanks!