Windows 2000 and linux on same box concurrently

[Joel Hammer]

I would like to get some advice about windows and linux. You can skip
all the verbiage and go right to the BASIC QUESTION at the end.

We are buying digital camera equipment for our pathology lab.  I want to
configure our cameras and computers  for maximum convenience for people
taking the photos, people editing them, and people creating presentations
from them.

Here is what I am contemplating:

Grossing room (Yes, we grossly examine the stuff,like gallbladders,
brains, etc):
  Digital camera tethered to a fairly simple linux computer via
usb. Images, as soon as taken, are transferred automatically to a windows
box in a different part of the lab (multiheaded scope room). There will
be a twisted wire network cable directly attaching these two computers.

Multiheaded scope room:
 This contains the digital photomicroscope (Nikon DXM-1200) tethered to
the windows box, a fancy image work station. (Pentium 4 2.2gigahertz
and big video card).

This work station will run windows and, hopfully, linux. The windows is
for two reasons only:
 1. To talk to the hospital wide network (we are a windows shop.)
 2. To run the software from Nikon to capture digital images. Until I
get my hands on the camera, I won't know if gphoto or some other linux
software will talk to the camera.

Although I have no experience with such things (windows beyond 98)
I am thinking of installing windows 2000, since that will give that
box server capability (I guess, including ipforwarding and such, so that
the linux box in the grossing room can be accessed) as well as provide
a good work station OS.

Now, here is where I really need advice.
 In my dream world, a user will be able to sit at his workstation anywhere
in the lab, using windows, and log onto the windows 2000 workstation
using the hospital intranet, and see and manipulate images. This might
involve image editing (using photoshop, for example, running on the
windows 2000 box ideally), simply viewing images, or downloading images
while preparing presentations, say with powerpoint.

It would be ideal if the user could log onto the windows 2000 box, and run a
remote X session. That way, the user could run gimp and any linux tools I
provide for them.

So, the ideal arrangement might be for the windows box would be to run
linux as the host OS and load and run windows 2000 under something like
VMware.  Is this possible? If so, would windows be able to talk to the
hardware, like usb ports or firewire ports, to enable the camera to work
with it? What about the network connection. It would have to be controlled
by windows 2000. If that happens, could a remote X session be possible?

BASIC QUESTION:
Well, you get the idea. The basic question is what is the best way to make
windows 2000 and linux run on the same box, at the same time, and what
networking and hardware functions will be missing if they do.

Thanks,
Joel