Ok, a bit late in this thread, but just a small remark on the future Opteron port : we have to take a *great* care of the migration process.
The main difference betweek Intel-64 and AMD-64, if I am correct, is that administrators can unplug their ix86 disk from the server, and replug it on a opteron box, swicth the power button, and that's it. You'll get almost the same machine, and the you can start the upgrade process to 64-bit for all applications that needs them, and them finish the migration. This is a process that takes time (and for some servers that will take months or years) Therefore you can migrate smoothly machines from the 32-bit world to the 64-bit world witout having to do a painful migration from a 32-bit server to a full 64-bit one ; this is, IMHO, the greatest advantage of Opteron. Many people will not switch to Itanium for this reason: you have to break everything, including production application that sill are 32-bit. Then, a nice thing would be on Debian, for a regular user/administrator: - switch the disks to a Opteron box - update the APT sources to a "Opteron" source, or to a "Opteron migration" source - then, use something like : apt-get install base-64 to install the essential system files for 64-bit apt-get install libc6-64 .. essential libraries and elements for 64-bit code apt-get kernel-image..-64 64-bit kernel for Opteron I'm not sure that all remarks are wise, but I did not see this (migration) point clearly emerging from the "Debian for x86-64 (AMD Opteron)" previous discussion (My 2 euro cents remark)