As most of you know, Linux is just a kernel. And, for a long time, the Linux kernel ran only on the Intel x86 series of machines, from the 386 up (there is work being done to port Linux to 286, and earlier, machines. See the ELKS project for more information).
However, this is no longer true, by any means. The Linux kernel has now been ported to a large, and growing, list of architectures. Following close behind, we have ported the Debian distribution to these architectures. In general, this is a process with a sticky start (as we get libc and the dynamic linker working smoothly), and then a relatively routine, if lengthy job, of attempting to recompile all our packages under the new architectures.
Debian is an operating system (OS), not a kernel (actually, it is more than an OS since it includes thousands of application programs). To prove this, we have our first three fledgling non-Linux based ports, listed at the bottom of this page.
Warning — this is a page in progress. Not all ports have pages yet, and most of them are on external sites. We are working on collecting information on all ports, to be mirrored along with the Debian website.
The following ports were included in at least one Debian stable release.
i386)
The first architecture, and not strictly a port. Linux was originally
developed for the Intel 386 processors, hence the short name. Debian supports
all IA-32 processors, made by Intel (including all Pentium series and recent
Core Duo machines in 32 bit mode), AMD (K6, all Athlon series,
Athlon64 series in 32 bit mode), Cyrix and other manufacturers.
As Debian's website
adjusts from the traditional i386-centric view of Linux to a more
balanced one, any i386 specific information will be moved here.
m68k)
First officially released with Debian 2.0. The port failed to make the release criteria for Debian 4.0 and has therefore not been included in Etch and later releases. The Debian m68k port runs on a wide variety of computers based on the Motorola 68k series of processors — in particular, the Sun3 range of workstations, the Apple Macintosh personal computers, and the Atari and Amiga personal computers.
sparc)
First officially released with Debian 2.1. This port runs on the Sun SPARCstation series of workstations, as well as some of their successors in the sun4 architectures.
alpha)
First officially released with Debian 2.1. One of the longer standing ports, and quite stable.
powerpc)
First officially released with Debian 2.2. This port runs on many of the Apple Macintosh PowerMac models, and on the CHRP and PReP open architecture machines.
armand
armel)
First officially released with Debian 2.2.
This port runs on a variety of embedded hardware, including the NSLU2.
Armel is the more efficient successor for the arm
port, which is
compatible with the ARM EABI.
mipsand
mipsel)
First officially released with Debian 3.0. Debian is being ported to the MIPS architecture which is used in SGI machines (debian-mips — big-endian) and Digital DECstations (debian-mipsel — little-endian).
hppa)
First officially released with Debian 3.0. This is a port to Hewlett-Packard's PA-RISC architecture, and it is in an advanced stage.
ia64)
First officially released with Debian 3.0. This is a port to Intel's first 64-bit architecture. Note: this should not be confused with the latest Intel 64-bit extensions for Pentium 4 and Celeron processors, called EM64T; for these, see the AMD64 port.
s390)
First officially released with Debian 3.0. This is a port to IBM S/390 servers.
amd64)
First officially released with Debian 4.0. Port to the 64 bit AMD64 processors. The goal is to support both 32bit- and 64bit-userland on this architecture. This port supports AMD's 64-bit Opteron, Athlon and Sempron processors, and Intel's processors with EM64T support, including the Pentium D and various Xeon and Core2 series.
The following ports never took part in a Debian stable release, but they should appear in one, eventually.
Port to the 64 bit PPC64 architecture with a complete 64-bit user space.
sh)
A fairly new port to Hitachi SuperH processors.
Port to big-endian ARM machines, especially to Linksys NSLU2.
Port to the 32-bit RISC microprocessor of Renesas Technology.
Port to Atmel's 32-bit RISC architecture, AVR32.
hurd-i386)
The GNU Hurd is a totally new operating system being put together by the GNU group. In fact, the GNU Hurd is the final component which makes it possible to built an entirely GNU OS — and Debian GNU/Hurd is going to be one such (possibly even the first) GNU OS. The current project is founded on the i386 architecture, but expect the others to follow soon.
netbsd-i386and
netbsd-alpha)
This is a port of the Debian operating system, complete with apt, dpkg, and GNU userland, to the NetBSD kernel. It is currently in a very preliminary stage, but since NetBSD is a production-level kernel, the usability of Debian GNU/NetBSD should increase rapidly. Currently Debian GNU/NetBSD for Intel x86 is the most advanced flavor, but work has also begun on supporting Alpha-based computers.
kfreebsd-gnu)
This is a port of the Debian GNU system to the kernel of FreeBSD. It is still an immature port, although some developers are known to be using it as a production environment for day-to-day work.
Although these efforts aren't exactly ports, this seemed like a good place to put them.
Beowulf is a replacement for some of the larger mega computers used in the science and math fields. This project aims to run Beowulf clusters on Debian machines and to network the people involved in true bazaar fashion.
EABI is the new Embedded
ABI by ARM Ltd..
EABI is actually a family of ABIs and one of the subABIs
is GNU EABI for Linux.
Disclaimer: Many of the above computer and processor names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their manufacturers. They are used without permission.