Debian 3.1 supports eleven major architectures and several variations of each architecture known as “flavors”.

This document covers installation for the Alpha architecture. If you are looking for information on any of the other Debian-supported architectures take a look at the Debian-Ports pages.

Complete information regarding supported DEC Alphas can be found at Linux Alpha HOWTO. The purpose of this section is to describe the systems supported by the boot disks.

Alpha machines are subdivided into different system types because there are a number of generations of motherboard and supporting chipsets. Different systems (“sub-architectures”) often have radically different engineering and capabilities. Therefore, the process of installing and, more to the point, booting, can vary from system to system.

The following table lists the system types supported by the Debian installation system. The table also indicates the code name for these system types. You'll need to know this code name when you actually begin the installation process:

It is believed that Debian sarge supports installing on all alpha sub-architectures with the exception of the ARC-only Ruffian and XL sub-architectures and the Titan subarchitecture, which requires a change to the kernel compile options.

Debian's support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying support found in XFree86's X11 system. Most AGP, PCI and PCIe video cards work under XFree86. Details on supported graphics buses, cards, monitors, and pointing devices can be found at http://www.xfree86.org/. Debian 3.1 ships with XFree86 version 4.3.0.

Multi-processor support — also called “symmetric multi-processing” or SMP — is supported for this architecture. However, the standard Debian 3.1 kernel image does not support SMP. This should not prevent installation, since the standard, non-SMP kernel should boot on SMP systems; the kernel will simply use the first CPU.

In order to take advantage of multiple processors, you'll have to replace the standard Debian kernel. You can find a discussion of how to do this in Section 8.4, “Compiling a New Kernel”. At this time (kernel version 2.4.27) the way you enable SMP is to select “Symmetric multi-processing support” in the “General setup” section of the kernel config.