Earth Operations Central is powered by a home-built Linux Box. I like building Linux boxes. I'd like to build a Linux box for you!
Here's some online documentation on Linux.
Central.EarthOps.Org runs on last year's model of a Pentium 4, with a motherboard that was really quite nice when I bought it, with a decent "ChainTech" graphics card and about a gigabyte of DDR RAM. It's just about exactly what you could buy for under $600.00 in your local department store.
Creating 'earthops.org' from scratch, way back in 1995, took me about two days, mostly because of my novice-level lack of familiarity with the operating system. (Then again, it might not be as easy for some people; I've been working with computers in some way or another since about 1980. I also like to believe that I learn quickly. I guess I am a bit of a "propeller-head".)