Dedicated PC for recording

[jonantice]

My church is currently considering recoring our sunday sermons and making them available as mp3s. I was just wondering if, instead of buying a digital sound recorder, it would be feasable to use a PC with a minimum installation. What I had in mind was:
- A Linux from Scratch (or something light)
- No gui or maybe just a small window manager, but I don't see why everything can't be done from the command prompt. You know the keyboards that have play, stop etc buttons...? Can they work on a command line for recording?
- Only audio recording and cd burning tools and;
- Perhaps in the future, a server for sharing over the internet (something the digital audio recorder can't do, that I am aware of).
In your opinions, what would be the minimum hardware requirements for such a system and more importantly can it be done. The sermons are usually 30-45 min long and maybe some special services would be recorded, which would be over an hour in length.

[a12ctic]

what are you asking, you seem to have it all figured out

[jonantice]

OK, I'll ask this: has anyone done something like this, how did it work out, and is it cheaper than its alternatives.

[wizzlefish]

I've tried setting up my Linux computer for recording, but found that lots of recording HARDWARE didn't offer Linux drivers, which is sad. M-Audio is one of the companies whose software I use, and on their driver site, I didn't find any Linux drivers (at least for the hardware I was using).