I'd just like to add probably-not-even-two-cents-worth: Whilst I personally can't see any immediately viable (read: in the next 10 years, if ever) work to use HURD (*shudder*) or MINIX, the OP might get some satisfaction from Nexenta (<a href="http://www.nexenta.org">http://www.nexenta.org</a>). From what I've read (project maintainers and users), it's in a really good shape. If it's so important to the OP to use something other than Linux (personally, I don't really see the point, but that's my overly-biased opinion), then get something with a kernel which has actually been shown to work on a fairly wide array of devices and which has constant, active development. Oh yeah, and get ZFS... Man, I wish the whole licensing debacle for ZFS was over and I could mkfs.zfs... But I digress. -d -- -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- There is no shame in not knowing; the shame is in not finding out.