I saw a lot of referrals to for sale sites so here is my
personal learning experience aimed at those on the list
who want to install

Linux on leftover hardware from their attics.

Red hat needs a 1.5 gig HDD and Linux in general needs a video card
that is mainstream and not upgraded it seems, since a Matrox
expression 3D PCI card is not on their list, but the Millennium is.

Linux Central sells the Redhat Linux for the cost of the discs plus $5
shipping
about $9 to your door.  No printed manual, no phone call.  But the phone
call
is not so valuable anyway...hanging out on a newsgroup asking questions
about compatibility and things like the 1.5 gig HDD required is valuable
to spend time on.  I found someone who volunteered to field questions
as I installed Linux the first time.

How to partition your HDD is not covered very well in the how to's...
I'm still confused about that, but since I am going to be just
using a station as an X terminal, I don't care enough to go beyond
a vanilla installation yet.   No matter what "packaged" version of Linux,
the docs are self conflicting often...as you read you can get different
directions
from different sections of the help files..Expect little info on trade offs
of disk partitioning or how to create a raid array right from the start.

Anyone?