On May 30,  1:34pm, Furmanek, Greg wrote:

> -> What, precisely, are you wondering about with regard to IA-64?
>
> The impact of IA-64 release on the percentage of usage
> of Linux vs. Windows in the high end workstations and desktop market.

Time will tell.

I've been running Linux on my IA-64 machine(s) since early this year. 
It works amazingly well which is surprising since the toolchain and
kernel are often in a state of flux!  There are two vendors
(Turbolinux and Red Hat) who have released alpha distributions for the
IA-64.  And Intel has recently made some A3 machines available to
sourceforge for their build farm.  Hopefully, that will mean that a
lot more code will get tested and put the hardware, kernel, etc. 
through its paces.

I have no idea how well Windows works on IA-64.  I think it will have
to run reasonably well though in order for Intel to sell enough boxes
so that it'll drive the prices down to affordable levels.

When the hardware is released (so that anyone can get it), Linux should
be solid.  I think the fact that a solid Linux will be available for the
new hardware concurrently with Windows should give it a higher usage
percentage than would be the case if Linux development were started
somewhat later.

The hardware contains an IA-32 compatibility mode, and though I
haven't tried it, it is my understanding that you can already run
linux/x86 binaries on Linux/IA-64.  This should make it a bit more
palatable to folks considering new hardware to move to Itanium.

Kevin