Is Fedora and Snort still my best option for a Hard Ware firewall to protect my network?

I have a pentium 333mh 384mb ram 8gb hdd and Athlon 2400+ 512mb ram and 80gb hdd

Does speed and ram make a significant effect to firewall/ network speed?

Is there any special way to install OS? Always been told less is more?

What about physical position of Firewall, what is best?

Any advice really appreciated.

Thanks