There are other cards out there which are also suitable, but I like the 3Com products so much that I run a purly 3Com shop. If you have a 100Mbit network, go with a 100Mbit card. RAM is a very important consideration. Usually boxes out there are greatly understaffed in the RAM department. Get more RAM than you think you need because growing room is always good.
RAM is cheap.
2 - afpd 936K Appletalk Filing Protocol daemon. The AppleTalk daemon. Obviously we want to run Linux. The choice lies in the distribution to run. I have run RedHat, Slackware, and Debian Linux and favor Debian over all for several reasons which I will not go into.