Going from windows user, to running a Linux web/mail server, hosting and creating your own site with user email, forums, blogs, and even ad revenue, from home:

Time: Varies Extremely depending on experience. 1 day to 3 months. You will find that this varies depending on personal experience as well as the amount of time that you spend working on your computer per day.

Required materials:

1. At least one computer to sacrifice to the server gods. Though this is not strictly necessary when you are starting out I highly recommend that you get a separate machine as opposed to running a server on the machine that you use regularly. The reasoning here is twofold, unless you already run Linux on your primary machine you will be losing all of that during the install and as a beginner you will make mistakes, even following guides and some of those mistakes might format your hard drive or require a reinstall of the operating system. So just play it safe start off with whatever spare computer is laying around. Pretty much any machine that can boot from CD can run a server. Sure later on you might want to upgrade your server, but in the beginning remember to keep it simple and cheap. You need to know where you want to go and how to get there before you can worry about getting there in style. My recommended absolute minimums are at least 256 megabytes of RAM (Memory), a 1.0 gigahertz cpu (processor speed), and 10 gigabytes (Hard Drive) of space. Feel free to experiment using this guide with a machine that meets these specifications. If things run a little slowly, be patient. For many of these machines the installation, setup, and configuration process is the most taxing period they will ever experience. Once setup, basic web and mail servers are not overly resource demanding. You simply have to remember to scale up your machine as traffic demands. In the beginning almost anything will do, anything being better than nothing but once you have enough traffic to require upgrading the upgrade is well worth the cost. Also bear in mind that these are the minimums any and all improvement upon them will show.

2. A working internet connection, this should be fairly self explanatory. Based on the fact you are reading this on a web site you should already qualify. Note: Not all internet connections are created equal. Be wary of trying to host or even administer a web site over a dial up connection. Any broadband connection (i.e. cable, dsl, or better) will be more than sufficient for our purposes. Be aware however that many residential ISPs (Internet Service Providers e.g. Comcast AOL) only provide you with dynamic IP this can cause additional complications. Do not worry they can all be made to work.

3. At least one blank CD-R and a CD burner. These must also be attached to a working computer with an internet connection, probably the one you are reading this on.

4. If your server machine is not a laptop then you will need a keyboard, mouse (optional but recommended for GUI (graphical user interface) use, monitor (optional but recommended for GUI), and video card compatible with monitor (optional but recommended for GUI). The GUI recommended items are only necessary if you plan on administering the server locally. If you plan on a remote management strategy (i.e. controlling the sever computer with a personal one). Then these items are really only recommended for the installation portion of the guide. Once you have an OS (operating system) installed you will be able to setup remote administration systems that make physical access to the server machine unnecessary except for administering physical upgrades (i.e. ram, cpu, hard drive, or internet connection hardware). Oddly enough a keyboard is required to be plugged in for many machines to boot up thus it is a requirement for even 100% remote administration on those machines.

5. You will probably want to register a domain name. If you are not picky cheap less desirable domain names can be purchases for less than 5 dollars. I recommend that you get either a .com, .net, or .org. The extra 2 to 5 dollars is well worth it to get a TLD (Top Level Domain) that people are accustomed to typing in already (i.e. .com). Remember that a domain name is not really a necessity in the strict sense of the word. It just makes the process a whole lot easier than if you had to type in your IP address every time you wanted to visit your server. In short get a domain name you like. Make it easy to type and spell. You will be seeing and typing this name often.

6. Software. All of the software that will be used in this tutorial is freely available for download from the internet.

Look forward to the first step after acquiring the necessary starting materials...