Hi Bob,
I’m a new guy to linux on the alpha…
Welcome!
Just got an AS 4100 server and was looking for a distro of linux to put on it. Has anyone on the list had any luck with this machine and Debian?
The only supported binary distribution for Alpha is the Debian Lenny release and it is now getting a bit old. The Alpha architecture is not included in the newer Debian Squeeze release (the aim is to release early February).
Debian still has Alpha in its unstable development and in some regards is better than Lenny (a number of important bugs are fixed) but is worse in others (there are some new very annoying bugs and the X window server only runs on BWX capable Alphas). I'm not sure whether the AS4100 comes with BWX capable CPUs (maybe someone else can comment on that) but if it does then I recommend you install Lenny (as the unstable distribution has no Alpha installer) then upgrade to Unstable. If you want a web browser to work on it you will need to compile your own one as the Debian supplied iceweasel, etc., is broken on Alpha.
I am currently running Debian Unstable on an XP1000 and PWS600au. Much of it is working well but some desktop programs (web browsers, thunderbird, etc.) crash too regularly to be useful. In contrast OpenOffice works well!
Also feel free to join #alpha on IRC. Cheers Michael.