On Thu, 31 May 2001, Austad, Jay wrote: > > MS has a 64-bit version of Whisler running on 16 processor IA-64 Compaq > servers. It's not released yet. I friend of mine does some consulting work > for MS, and he's used it. Apparently it runs fairly well. However, since > Linux already runs on it, and MS won't have their OS out for it until > probably the end of the year, the release of this platform in June/July is > going to be a huge blow to MS. Companies with money are going to be itching > to get their hands on them, and they'll be forced to use linux on it if they > want to be early adopters. What about applications? I'm assuming that for the most part "porting" a linux app to the architecture is a matter of getting a C compiler that compiles 64 bit code (we assume this is done, as the kernel runs on 64 bits) and then just running 'make' to recompile the existing code into a 64 bit app. Now granted, it won't be OPTIMIZED until some later date but at least the app will run on the new platform. Is this correct? On the Windows side, it seems that doing the same sort of thing is just too much work and they need to start over every time they move to a new architecture. At least this has been in the past. Am I correct in assuming that because linux is designed to be portable that its kernel, compiler (already done), and apps will port over quickly, whereas Micro$oft will see many code re-writes to get their stuff to run? Or will their current apps speak 32 bit to the kernel and the kernel speaks 64 to the chip? I'm just thinking about the edge linux will have come Jan when linux has the whole suite of apps, old and new, running on the IA-64 and Micro$oft is putting out it's late and still buggy versions of Whi$tler/XP/whatever. -Brian