An example will be useful here. If your computer has a network card, you should now look at making your newly configured Linux box your gateway to the outside world. You can also allow your other computer to share the dialup connection on this machine. All of this can be done very simply with something called IP Masquerading. Now that you have got your Linux system operational, you can still run some of the Windows or Mac applications under Linux.
Wine is free while vmware is a commercial product.
Wine is recommended because, unlike vmware, you do not need Windows before running a Windows application. But, since Wine is still a work in progress, there are some windows applications that will not run. If you have one of those, then your best bet is vmware. Linux is a child of the Internet and that is where you will find support and help for its multi-faceted applications. Join this growing community of Linux users by signing up to their mailing list.