I was wondering if anyone has an answer for this...

I am getting sick and tired of being sick and tired of windows and plan to migrate my network to Linux in the coming months. However I am running a home network with 5 users who would not be quite so happy with the inconvenience. I am looking to minimize the downtime caused by this.

I am currently running a dual boot between W2K Pro and W98, and will be removing W98 from the system. I need a way to install Red Hat 8 without bringing the net down and then slowly migrating to Linux as I learn its ins and outs.

I have stored all user files and configuration info on a third partition running NTFS and need those files to be available under Linux. There is a tuorial posted here regarding a dual W9x/Linux boot, however it did not mention anything about minimizing network downtime.

Please bear in mind that I have next to no experience with *nix systems. The whole purpose of this exercise is to gain that experience.

Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.