[rescue] RE: Re: Alpha rescue

[Robert Novak]

On Wed, 15 Aug 2001, Hatle, Steven J. wrote:

> Rob,
> 
> Sweeps through Google seem to indicate that OSF-1 and earlier versions
> of VMS are realistic on this platform; I have _no_ wish to run NT on
> this thing!

Understood. This is all highly disclaimed opinion from me--my Alphas are
all PCI (Multia, Station 250 4/266, Station 600 5/266) so some of these
problems don't affect me.

> I'll check out your links and see what I find. I've seen indications that
> Debian/Alpha is not bad, so I might give that a shot.

I've run it, and it went pretty well for me on the 4/266. I also got an
nfs root install of Debian on the Multia, although I never learned how to
boot net-root from the net without a local disk. 

> Of course, if James S. is correct, and BSD shows up soon, that would
> probably be my ideal end OS.

FreeBSD has Alpha support of some flavor. I'm moderately certain it will
run on some of my machines, but not sure about Jensen. Being from the
post-SunOS era, I find FreeBSD's install to be more comfortable to me than
the other BSDs, but that's entirely subjective. I still lean toward Open
(where possible) for server use if I'm not going to tweak it often.

--Rob (off to check OpenPackages and
http://junior.apk.net/~havoc/decgear.html ... mmm, PowerStorm)

Robert Novak, Indyramp Consulting * rnovak at indyramp.com * indyramp.com/~rnovak
        "And it's been a long December and there's reason to believe
           Maybe this year will be better than the last...." -- counting crows