I am potentially getting a used Computer from work. The machine looks to be somewhat powerful. (Dual P3-500’s, SCSI disks, not sure of RAM.) The big question is what to do with the machine’s OS. As I have posted before, I am a huge fan of Gentoo Linux (this machine is running Gentoo). The trouble is that it might make sense for me to broaden my horizons. As it stands, I have a couple of Gentoo servers, a couple of Windows machines (XP and 2000) and finally a Solaris box (Ultra 5).
So now back to the question of the new machine. Obviously, Gentoo would be the easy installation since I know the software well and have installed it on multiple machines. The problem is that I do not want to become too Gentoo focused. While in general Linux is standardized, all distros handle things a bit differently. One option is to choose a different distro say Fedora. This would certainly broaden my knowledge, and could be relatively easy since I have experience with RH 7.0, RH 7.3 and RH 8.0. Of course, it is just more Linux. The other option is to try a new OS altogether. I could certainly install and Windows2000 Server and in fact have a CD and a license key here somewhere, but another option is to stick on the Unix side and go with BSD. It is a UNIX variant so is different from Linux, but people who use it swear by it.
These choices are still up in there. I do not expect to get the machine for a couple of weeks so I have time to ponder, but that is my current issue. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them.