MisterM - all of the other clients from non-win platforms run VLARs faster than win + CLI (including the win GUI). 2K & NT will run them a bit faster than 9x/ME.
Also you asked:
And, how hard do you think is integrating a Linux based system into a Win2k based network?
My alpha running linux (Red Hat 6.2) is currently a member of my win2K's domain (not a "native" 2K domain but a legacy NT-style domain that I configured on the 2K). The alpha running the ppstats program, has a share mapped to my 2K advanced server to grab the 2K's pproxy logs from its pproxy server, in order to run stats.
Out of my 12 machines, I currently have 3 booted to win, 1 running NetBSD, and everything else running Linux. No problem (other than continually rebooting the 98 and 98SE... 😛).