[rescue] Appropriate OS for Alpha?

[Chris Petersen]

On Mon, Jul 15, 2002 at 08:52:06AM -0400, Tim H. wrote:
> On Sun, 14 Jul 2002 22:02:38 -0500 (CDT)
> Eric Dittman <dittman at dittman.net> wrote:
> 
> > Dave, I'd have to say that Tru64 is more probably more modern
> > than NetBSD/Alpha, given the development history.  Also,
> > Tru64 was the first fully 64-bit Unix.
> 
> Yeah, but I was pretty specific, I had DU 4.0d, which is pre-Compaq, and
> not as new as NetBSD.  My specific concern was hardware suport, the BSD
> with the most specific information was OpenBSD, which said their Alpha
> port wasn't up to date, but specifically mentioned hardware support
> holes for the AS400.  NetBSD was not as specific about support for
> individual models, just "we support more Alpha machines than any other
> BSD" which is good news, but rather vague.  
> 

NetBSD is definetely a good route to look at, and is something I'll probably
start evaluating for my home use.  That said, *don't* expect that just
because you're running NetBSD or Linux you'll be home free on hardware
support.  I've found a couple of things to be true:

1) Assuming that just because it's supported in a given x86 variant doesn't
mean it'll be supported in a non-x86 variant

2) If you're using SRM as your boot console, you'll be amazed at the
hardware it'll get in the way of using...Heck, I couldn't even get a DEC
ZLXp-L1 PCI framebuffer to work in a 600au, which is only slightly newer
then the machines that used that card...

Chris

-- 
Chris Petersen			  E-mail: havoc at apk.net
Systems Engineer, ExperTeam Services, EDS PLM Solutions