[rescue] Appropriate OS for Alpha?

[Dave McGuire]

On July 14, Tim H. wrote:
> I have an AlphaServer 400 4/166 and I have Digital Unix 4.0d.  I want to
> do simple fileserving at home, some Samba, some mail, some NFS, a very
> little web, NTP, all for internal use.  The box sits behind a tight
> firewall, so security is important, but not critical.(a few known
> exploits won't bother me) Will be serving very few (<10) users, may be
> exporting home directories with NFS to Irix, BSD, Linux.  X is not
> required.
> 
> Is this a good OS for this use?  Another version? Linux? xBSD?  Am
> interested in soft raid mirror, but I have tape backup, and their will
> be little movement on the box, so that isn't required.
> 
> Also, I'd like 100Mbit ethernet in the box, what affordable card should
> I look for and what OS supports it?

  NetBSD/alpha will do all those things, and do them quite well.  It'll
run very nicely on that box, and squeeze a good deal of performance
out of it as well.  It can be installed and booted in about fifteen
minutes flat if you pull down an .iso and burn it onto a CDR.  I
wholeheartedly recommend it.

  Digital Unix is solid, but it's a commercial OS...and as such, sorely
lacks in features, modern-ness, and device support.

        -Dave

-- 
Dave McGuire                  "Needing a calculator indicates that
St. Petersburg, FL              your .emacs file is incomplete." -Joshua Boyd