Thanks, this brings some relief.
The problem is that, when searching for info about a server machine
offered by the reseller, I'm a bit scared to find out that only binary
downloads for a restricted range of operating systems are available...
this happened with an IBM machine, and now I'm looking for an Intel
server board... it's advertised as having "Intel® Server Management 8"
software, but will I be able to use it on Debian? Will I really need it?
Can I live without it or is it an essential component? I'm having a hard
way finding answers to these questions...