The pre-sale is over now and I will be receiving a decent allotment of DOT tokens when Polkadot is ready. My intention is to actively participate in the network by operating a node. I also hold enough ether to stake for ethereum, so it might make sense for me act as a collator in the Polkadot ecosystem?

In any case, I will need some hardware and an operating system to run the Polkadot client on. I want to get going with this soon so that I am comfortable, hopefully, to participate in the test-net if possible. This is where I need the help of more expert people. What hardware should I acquire to be able operate a robust node? What operating system should I learn that will be most useful for this specific application?

I assume I will need some version of linux? If you could tell me specifically which version is most most suited to this application, I will obtain it and familiarize myself with it.

Thanks in advance.