Switching from a PC running IPcop to an ADSL router was incredibly easy - in fact if I'd had the forethought to give the ADSL router the same IP address as the firewall I wouldn't have had to change anything at all on the other PCs in the network. Point to the router for a gateway and for DNS (which it was doing already with IPCop) and that's all there is to it.

The router's a Dynamode 4-port hub/ADSL router comination, bought from SCAN (cheap and cheerful).

On Windows you can use USB to configure it initially (but that's a bad way to use it to connect to the net); on Linux I had temporarily to change some IP addresses so I could talk to it. Set up a handful of settings, reboot, surf and forget.

You are right that Windows and Linux are just the same when connecting to the net through a LAN. And you can set up mail and news servers on a linux box and get your Windows system to use them (I do this with news, haven't done it yet with mail). I've also done shared file systems with Samba (Win-Linux) and NFS (Linux-Linux).

This is at home (two user PCS, one headless server) and the same at work (one file and mail server, about 8 Windows PCXs) both using Plus Net (ISP) and the Dynamode ADSL router. It just works!

I'd recommend getting an ADSL-ethernet router rather than a modem for anyone, even if you're only connecting a single PC to the net. 100Mbit ethernet card and cable costs less than a fiver (Scan again) and you have a separate box doing firewalling for you, that's maybe £15 more than a modem-only ADSL box. Plus if you ever do decide to add a second PC later, you just plug it in and go.

Anahata