One nail, 500 hammers.

It's definitely a truism that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Take web programming, for instance. While PHP may not always be the best choice for what a user wants, and there are so many other choices in this environment, it's the tool I have, so I seek to fit all the requests to the tool, rather than finding a tool that fits the requests. Sad, yes. But what about the opposite side of things. What if you only have one nail, and 500 hammers to choose from. Does it matter?

Here's the example: I want a file and backup server for home use. I have the hardware already. 333MHz processor, 256 MB of RAM, three drives, (one 6GB for the OS, and two 20GB for storage), network and all that... Fine for a little file server. But what OS to put on it? It will run windows 2000, linux, *BSD, Solaris... So what's the best choice for a file server? Well, let's see.

Solaris... out, since it runs so slow on x86. Not that I need super fast response time, but if I'm going to run backups to it, I do need something halfway decent. No SPARCs in my house.

Windows... viable. It will run, if a little slow on that processor, and I already support it at work. The only concern is the general stability of the OS. I'd like to have something I could just let run. Windows requires regular reboots.

Linux/BSD... Fine operating systems, and would serve just fine as a file server. Low operating system overhead, so speed should be just fine. But what distribution? And does it matter? So many to choose from... how do I keep this simple?

I think I'm going to try Red Hat's new free distribution, Fedora, and see how that works out. I may also try my hand again at FreeBSD. If either of those proves too much of a hassle for a unix newb like me to figure out and get up on the mostly Windows network I currently have, I'll probably punt and go with Win 2000.

Sometimes, you just have to go with the hammer you know.

Comments or suggestions are appreciated.

CS