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Linux can easily be used as a firewall gateway and there are linux distros specially designed to do just that. Some can even run off a floppy. This used to be a typical way to reuse old PCs that couldn't be used for anything else. Now, most hardware routers have built in firewalls, at least the good ones do. If you look under the hood of these routers, they usually run a modified linux. Some can even be hacked to do other things.
Hardware requirements are minimal for making a linux firewall/gateway - certainly any pentium class PC that can accept two pci nics is about it.
If you just want to get your feet wet with linux, I'd recommend you take a look at any of several bootable live linux cds like knoppix or mepis. The isos are freely downloadable. Just burn the iso as an image and boot off the cd. You boot into a full graphical linux desktop and nothing is written to your hard drive.
This might be better than fooling around with linux firewall distros which are typically very stripped down and optimised to do one thing - act as a firewall/gateway.
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