I've been searching through the forums and wiki to try and find answers to these questions but for most of them I have had no luck. Most are based on my network so first off here is a network diagram:
On with the questions:
1. As you can see my Smoothwall firewall is also my DHCP server. I don't want to change that if I don't have to. However I would still like to have the network boot for future expansion. Smoothwall has an option to define a boot server within it DCHP settings page. Would it be possible to set up the MCE box so that it will still act as a boot server without having DHCP enabled?
2. In my apartment there are 4 other people. We all share the main TV which is where the MCE box will be located. They would like to have their media available on the MCE box as well without connecting to my personal network, ie without running multiple wires. There is free VPN software available called Hamachi that will work to connect multiple computers together allowing them to share files and such. Hamachi works by setting up a virtual network adapter and giving it a unique IP address. The question is will Linux MCE use this virtual network adapter and find any media that is available through it?
3. My Linux MCE box will be based on an AMD 64bit processor. Can I use an AMD64 version of Ubuntu or do I have to use the x86 version?
4.
I plan on using an MSI NX8500GT variant, either the MTD256EH or the TD256E. The only real difference, besides price, is that the MTD256EH has an HDMI port. Will I see a big difference between the HDMI and the HD component cable on the TD256E?5. I would like to use 2 HDDs in my system instead of one. One, an older IDE drive, would be used for the system files with the other, a new 3GBs SATA drive, being used for all of the recordings. Is it possible to do this during set up or will I have to muck around afterwards in order to get it to work?
Well thats all for now. As always any help with these questions is greatly appreciated.
Edit: #4 is now irrelevant because I have made my choice.
