A Year Ago: Red Hat releases 64-bit Itanium Linux

Red Hat released an alpha version of a complete, 64-bit Linux distribution to developers on Wednesday. The software package, built within the open-source Trillian Project, is the first public alpha release of a full 64-bit Linux bundle, containing a kernel, drivers and popular applications such as Apache.

The Red Hat package also contains 64-bit development compilers and libraries. The release -- combined with Intel's release of the Itanium Processor Microarchitecture Reference, a complete guide to the chip's architecture -- gives software developers the information they need to start serious Itanium development.

Indeed, even if you don't have preproduction IA-64 systems in hand, you could start developing with confidence for Itanium on 32-bit systems.

"This release will enable the open-source Linux community to accelerate their development of advanced server and workstation applications for Itanium processor based systems," said Michael Pope, Intel's director of e-business marketing, in a prepared statement.

The code is available at Red Hat's FTP site. As alpha code for a preproduction system, however, Red Hat recommended that only serious developers with the proper equipment download it.

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