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I have seen a little bit about myth being client/server but didnt know too much more then just that.. so its actually designed to be run on 2 differnt machines?

The client/server part of Myth is not the easiest thing to understand until you start to use it, but it is totally awesome and really worth taking advantage of. In MythTV terminology, the client is called a 'frontend' and the server is called a 'backend'.

A backend is the part that has the tuners and inputs attached to it. It receives the TV signal, schedules recordings and does the encoding.

A frontend is the GUI part. It has the menus that you can flick through, watch TV, watch recordings and schedule recordings here.

There is also a MySQL database at the heart of all of this. And this part also has an independent server part. Most people seem to run the MySQL server software on the same machine as the Myth-backend software. This is one of the more confusing aspects of every Myth installer I've seen -- you get prompted for all of these mysterious MySQL Server user/password/etc.. settings, and then prompted again for the Myth Server user/password/etc.. settings. No big deal now that you know about it.

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Am I going to have more lag between channel changes then the tivo with myth?

Probably. The software that is used for viewing ("myth frontend") is completely separate from the software used for managing the TV Tuner hardware ("myth backend"). So whenever you change channels, the two must switch gears, and the backend has to start recording to disk, and then finally the frontend has to begin reading/playing the file from disk. There's no direct connection between them (this is the most asked-for and most denied feature request for Myth, hands down). The channel change delay is typically about 3 seconds for analog, more for HD digital.

However.. once you have used it for a week or so, you'll find you no longer channel-surf at all, so channel-change times become totally non-important. Myth auto-nukes commercials, and is quite good at recording hundreds of hours of stuff in advance for you. I'm forever playing "catch up" with recordings it has captured months ago.

Cheers