My ANS 500 (with a 200MHz CPU) is still running www.floodgap.com and most of my services. It's due to be decommissioned soon, but that'll be a few months yet.
You can install Linux on them, but it's not easy, and most current distros do not support it. NetBSD/macppc does and is a fairly easy install, but it does not support internal video (you need a serial console -- a cheap PC or a used Wyse will do nicely). However, AIX is really the only OS that supports them well. You can even get CDE up and running on the console, but you should do this inside a secured network as it has a lot of remotely exploitable flaws in this version. YOU MUST FIND THE ORIGINAL Apple-branded AIX -- IBM standard AIX will NOT work. You can run 4.1.4.0, 4.1.4.1 or 4.1.5 on them, but I strongly recommend 4.1.5.
My ANS runs AIX 4.1.5 with a hardened configuration I custom-hacked. It has done so since 1998 in nearly continuous service; I got mine nearly new, along with a spare 700 I keep around for parts. They're solid machines and they have exceptional I/O throughput for machines of their class. Their chief drawback is size; power-wise, they're actually not all that hungry (mine uses 130W on a 325W supply for the 200MHz card, 512MB of parity RAM, DDS-2 DAT and a single 18GB SCSI-2 disk).
The ANS is mostly of interest from a historical perspective and as a neat piece of hardware unlike anything else Apple ever made. I am an old AIX sysadmin from the 3.2.5 days, and I run AIX 6 on a POWER6, so I am very familiar with the OS and the ANS was a natural choice for me to own. For people who want a big Mac server, this is the wrong unit to get. But, for people who want a truly unique Unix server in their collection, this is a nice choice and an intro to medium-sized server iron.
You can install Linux on them, but it's not easy, and most current distros do not support it. NetBSD/macppc does and is a fairly easy install, but it does not support internal video (you need a serial console -- a cheap PC or a used Wyse will do nicely). However, AIX is really the only OS that supports them well. You can even get CDE up and running on the console, but you should do this inside a secured network as it has a lot of remotely exploitable flaws in this version. YOU MUST FIND THE ORIGINAL Apple-branded AIX -- IBM standard AIX will NOT work. You can run 4.1.4.0, 4.1.4.1 or 4.1.5 on them, but I strongly recommend 4.1.5.
My ANS runs AIX 4.1.5 with a hardened configuration I custom-hacked. It has done so since 1998 in nearly continuous service; I got mine nearly new, along with a spare 700 I keep around for parts. They're solid machines and they have exceptional I/O throughput for machines of their class. Their chief drawback is size; power-wise, they're actually not all that hungry (mine uses 130W on a 325W supply for the 200MHz card, 512MB of parity RAM, DDS-2 DAT and a single 18GB SCSI-2 disk).
The ANS is mostly of interest from a historical perspective and as a neat piece of hardware unlike anything else Apple ever made. I am an old AIX sysadmin from the 3.2.5 days, and I run AIX 6 on a POWER6, so I am very familiar with the OS and the ANS was a natural choice for me to own. For people who want a big Mac server, this is the wrong unit to get. But, for people who want a truly unique Unix server in their collection, this is a nice choice and an intro to medium-sized server iron.