You knew exactly where I was going with that! Years ago I studied the IRIX operating system when learning 3D software for use on SGI workstations (man that was a while ago!).
I had a music server die that had a Linux based operating system and when I thought about the time it would take to load a machine and wade through it to figure it out I decided to cut my losses and buy a different server! I still have it in a box in the garage.