Trillian determined to outgun Windows 2000

The Trillian project to port Linux to Intel's IA-64 architecture does not see Monterey as a rival, but is determined to outgun Windows 2000.

This is the view of Sridhar Chilukuri, director of business development at VA Linux Systems - the main mover and shaker behind the Trillian project.

Last month, IBM, SCO and Sequent announced that Monterey, their hybrid development of the three companies' Unix operating system, was the first commercial Unix operating system to work on Intel's IA-64 chip.

Chilukuri said: "As far as we are concerned, Monterey is not competition."

He added: "Trillian ported Linux to IA-64 in August, long before Monterey. The momentum is behind Linux."

However, Monterey members might argue that the boot-up was on a Merced simulator, not the pure Merced.

Chilukuri said: "Our focus is to be first on IA-64 when it comes off the assembly line. NT is the main competition, and making people abandon their NT efforts is a priority."

Regarding Trillian's progress, Chilukuri said that Trillian is "on track" to deliver a base working port of the Linux operating system in about four months.

Results of the project will become available online to the open source community, allowing software developers (ISVs) to develop applications for the Linux environment.

No ISVs have officially joined Trillian, but "there's a lot of interest from a lot of people," said Chilukuri.

He added: "I would expect every enterprise software player to port applications."

Chilukuri would not comment on any additional members to Trillian, but said: "I think everybody in their right mind will ship products for Trillian."

He added: "It's hard to predict how it will take off. My feeling is that, like Red Hat, it will just zoom off. That's the nature of open source."