Debian -- Ports

Debian -- Ports
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Introduction
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.
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). Accordingly,
while most Debian ports are based on Linux, there also are ports based on
the Hurd kernel, and there have been ports in the past based on the FreeBSD
and NetBSD kernels.
More ports may be
listed
on the wiki.
List of official ports
These ports are the officially supported architectures by the Debian project,
and either part of an official release or to be part of an upcoming one.
Port
Architecture
Description
Added
Status
amd64
64-bit PC (amd64)
Port to 64-bit x86 processors, to support both 32-bit and 64-bit userland.
The port supports AMD's 64-bit Opteron, Athlon and Sempron
processors, and Intel's processors with Intel 64 support, including the
Pentium D and various Xeon and Core series.
4.0
released
arm64
64-bit ARM (AArch64)
Port to the 64-bit ARM architecture with the new version 8 64-bit
instruction set (called AArch64), for processes such as the
Applied Micro X-Gene, AMD Seattle and Cavium ThunderX.
released
armhf
Hard Float ABI ARM
Port to the 32-bit little-endian ARM architecture for boards and devices
that ship with a floating-point unit (FPU), and other modern ARM CPU features.
This port requires at least an ARMv7 CPU with Thumb-2 and VFPv3-D16
floating point support.
7.0
released
i386
32-bit PC (i386)
Port to 32-bit x86 processors, where 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.
1.1
released
(partial)
loong64
LoongArch (64-bit little endian)
Port for 64-bit little-endian LoongArch architecture.
14
testing
ppc64el
POWER7+, POWER8
Port for the 64-bit little-endian POWER architecture,
using the new Open Power ELFv2 ABI.
released
riscv64
RISC-V (64-bit little endian)
Port for 64-bit little-endian
RISC-V
a free/open ISA.
13
released
s390x
System z
Port to the 64-bit userland for IBM System z mainframes.
7.0
released
List of other ports
These ports are either work in progress efforts that intend to eventually
be promoted into officially released architectures, ports that were once
officially supported but stopped being released because failed the release
qualification or had limited developer interest, or ports that are no
longer worked on and are listed for historical interest.
These ports, when they are still actively maintained, are available on
the
infrastructure.
There are non-official installation images available for some of the following ports in
Those images are maintained by the corresponding Debian Port Teams.
Port
Architecture
Description
Added
Dropped
Status
Superseded by
alpha
Alpha
Port to the 64-bit RISC Alpha architecture.
2.1
6.0
ports
arm
OABI ARM
Port to the 32-bit little-endian ARM architecture using the old ABI.
2.2
6.0
dead
armel
armel
EABI ARM
Port to the 32-bit little-endian ARM architecture using the Embedded ABI,
that supports ARM CPUs compatible with the v5te instruction set.
This port does not take advantage of floating-point units (FPU).
5.0
14
dead
armhf, arm64
avr32
Atmel 32-bit RISC
Port to Atmel's 32-bit RISC architecture, AVR32.
dead
hppa
HP PA-RISC
Port to Hewlett-Packard's 32-bit PA-RISC architecture.
3.0
6.0
ports
hurd-i386
32-bit PC (i386)
Port to the GNU Hurd operating system, for the 32-bit x86 processors.
ports
hurd-amd64
64-bit PC (amd64)
Port to the GNU Hurd operating system, for the 64-bit x86 processors.
It supports only 64-bit, not 32-bit along 64-bit.
ports
ia64
Intel Itanium IA-64
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 Intel 64; for these, see the amd64 port.
3.0
dead
kfreebsd-amd64
64-bit PC (amd64)
Port to the kernel of FreeBSD using the glibc.
It was released as the first non-Linux port of Debian as a technology preview.
6.0
dead
kfreebsd-i386
32-bit PC (i386)
Port to the kernel of FreeBSD using the glibc.
It was released as the first non-Linux port of Debian as a technology preview.
6.0
dead
m32
M32R
Port to the 32-bit RISC microprocessor of Renesas Technology.
dead
m68k
Motorola 68k
Port to the 32-bit Motorola 68k series of processors — in
particular, the Sun3 range of workstations, the Apple Macintosh personal
computers, and the Atari and Amiga personal computers.
2.0
4.0
ports
mips
MIPS (32-bit big-endian mode)
Port to
the MIPS architecture which is used in (32-bit big-endian) SGI machines.
3.0
11
dead
mipsel
MIPS (32-bit little-endian mode)
Port to
the MIPS architecture which is used in (32-bit little-endian)
Digital DECstations.
3.0
13
dead
mips64el
MIPS (64-bit little-endian mode)
Port to the 64-bit little-endian N64 ABI for the MIPS64r1 ISA and
hardware floating-point.
13
dead
netbsd-i386
32-bit PC (i386)
Port to the NetBSD kernel and libc, for the 32-bit x86 processors.
dead
netbsd-alpha
Alpha
Port to the NetBSD kernel and libc, for the 64-bit Alpha processors.
dead
or1k
OpenRISC 1200
Port to the 32-bit
OpenRISC
1200
open source CPU.
dead
powerpc
Motorola/IBM PowerPC
Port for many of
the 32-bit Apple Macintosh PowerMac models, and CHRP and PReP open
architecture machines.
2.2
ports
powerpcspe
PowerPC Signal Processing Engine
Port to the "Signal Processing Engine" hardware present on low-power 32-bit FreeScale and IBM "e500" CPUs.
dead
ppc64
POWER4 to POWER9
Port for the 64-bit big-endian POWER architecture,
using the PowerPC ELF ABI Supplement.
ports
s390
S/390 and zSeries
Port to 32-bit IBM S/390 servers.
3.0
dead
s390x
sparc
Sun SPARC
Port for the 32-bit Sun UltraSPARC series of workstations,
as well as some of their successors in the sun4 architectures.
2.1
dead
sparc64
sparc64
64-bit SPARC
Port to the 64-bit SPARC processors.
ports
sh4
SuperH
Port to 32-bit Hitachi SuperH processors. Also supports the open source
J-Core
processor.
ports
x32
64-bit PC with 32-bit pointers
Port to the amd64/x86_64 x32 ABI, which uses the amd64 instruction set but
with 32-bit pointers, to combine the larget register set of that ISA with
the smaller memory and cache footprint resulting from 32-bit pointers.
ports
Many of the above computer and processor
names are trademarks and registered trademarks of their manufacturers.
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Last Modified: Fri, Apr 24 07:24:12 UTC 2026