HT: Sure
Serial ATA:
Check this site out. Hope it's up to date, otherwise probably
Firewire: probably.
For all that stuff,
why don't you get it from the horse's mouth?
As far as the Cable modem? I don't know.
If it is like mine it simply acts as a bridge between the cable company's network and my own Ethernet network (in most cases the simple ethernet connection from the modem to my computer). The modem uses DHCP to configure my computer's networking stuff. My computer has to have the correct name for the DHCP to happen, since this is how the cable company identifies my computer and authorizes my computer.
So if that how your cable modem works, then yes it will support it. You may have to know your DNS server's ip numbers, though. You can probably write down the name and dns numbers off of your windows stuff if you have to.
If it's a internal cable modem. Then it still may. The surfboard is one of the more common names out there, so if any have support, then that probably will. And I know a few internal cable modems do have support.
The Microsoft Home Network kit. Hell if I know; I don't know what that is. If it is what my cable company gave me (A CD and some directions), it was a stupid program that automaticly configured the DHCP settings in my computer and added some crap to my IE and set up a proxy for it. It added a couple other POS, programs that I didn't need, plus it probably(actually probably not, but there are rumors) installed some spyware.
Now it that Mircosoft Networking Kit is some hardware and special software for sharing connections between computers or something like that, then since it has "Microsoft" in it and Microsoft purposely designs all of it's products to be incompatable with anything other then windows, the I doubt if it will work.
good luck, I hope that helped.
If you want a better answer, check out the "Live" eval CD. This is a Mini SuSE CD that runs Linux off of the CD. The real install is going to be more "complete", but the CD can give you idea what to expect.