There are som many packages of linux out there. I just downloaded Fedora but . . .

Here is what I am wanting to do:

1) Set up a linux box with an old 800Mhz Windows box.
2) Get my feet wet with linux.
Duplicate the environment that exists on the servers that we typically use for production websites (use same linux, Apache, Mysql etc).
3) Set up a drive that can be used on the box for middle of the night backups of the 2 XP machines and one Mac OSX machine on my netywork.
4) Any other ideas that you all suggest as I don't know all that much about linux.

So...

Which linux package of linux?

No reason why you can't use Fedora on that machine. I ran a server on a PII 400, and moved to FC5 when I bought a new box. I now run CentOS 4.3 on the old PII.

A really useful (Fedora fociussed) site for you

http://www.linuxhomenetworking.com/#Linux

This one's pretty good too

http://www.comptechdoc.org/os/linux/


Good luck


Bill