[FAQ?] Setting up a friend's business on Linux...

[Duane Morin]

Surely this has been asked a dozen times before, so what I'm wondering
is if somebody has setup another mailing list or blog or something to
discuss the topic of getting a small business up and running on
linux/open source?  Got a friend who is asking me for help, and beyond
telling him stuff like "Let's assume you start with Linux, Apache, PHP,
and MySQL, you gotta get yourself a machine, a hosting provider, and
maybe a part time consultant to admin it..." I can't really fill in any
details.

Is there a place where people are talking about just this sort of thing?
What he can expect to pay a hosting provider (or at least what the
variables are)?  How we can determine if he can get by with 1 beast of a
machine or if he needs a dedicated webserver / database server combo
right out of the gate?

I'm a software guy.  I know what he wants to run and can help him set up
that aspect of it.  It's the resource allocation bit (and the economics)
I need to research.  Just because you CAN run your DB on the same
machine as your web server doesn't mean that it's the right thing to do.
In a bigger environment I'd say to split it up across machines for
security and scalability reasons, but just to get started, is it typical
to get up and running with one machine?

Thanks!

Duane