objective 1)
trying to run joomla or mambo for an internal intra net site at a private school, would it be best to setup a dedicated xp machine running xamp server or if i go the linux route, would ubuntu be sufficient ? (i really wana go the linux route, but dont’ have to much linux under my belt)
objective 2)
we have a library of 500-600 books, is there a way (prefrebably open source) to catalogue these with an inhouse dedicated server? and have the ability to have a web interface for the students to search for the books within the database?
If you don't have any Linux experience I wouldn't suggest that for a production machine, specially if you don't have anyone else supporting it. You should be fine with XP and XAMP. Once installed you don't really have to go to the console. You should be able to operate remotely via the web interface of Joomla/Mambo.
In any of the above 2 CMSs, you should be able to setup a catalog app and put the indices of the books in there.
Linux route maybe harder for you if you don't have any experience with linux... unless you buy Cpanel/WHM to manage the server. I think their is license fee for using that though.
Joomla and Mambo two branches of same tree, however, with Joomla 1.5 out recently, its beginning to look like a whole new tree. So considering the following and extensions available for joomla, I would opt for that instead of mambo, which is a dying breed, IMHO.
As far as which extension to use... I am not sure what you plan on doing? Have a repository of files/books?
You may want to look at extensions like DOCman and JXplorer (File Management And Sharing System).
well for the web server i'm just gona go with xp and xammp to host joomla.
now the second thing is totally different. need some type of open source data management to basically run a school library. (we'd have a completely different setup for that as far as hardware). any suggestions?