Re: debian architectures
Mauro Darida wrote:
> I cannot quite understand which machines debian "architectures" are
> referring to. Of course I know that x-86 are common pcs, sparc are sun
> workstations, but others are quite cryptic to me. Anyone willing to
> translate into non-developer language??
Here's a list off the top of my head. Presumably others will add to and
correct it.
* alpha - Digital (DEC) workstations, usually originally running VMS,
although there was a Windows NT port to this for a while. Pretty much
legacy-only now.
* arm - Includes a lot of embedded systems like routers, some PDAs (e.g.
Sharp's Zaurus).
* ia64 - Intel's 64-bit Itanium series of workstations. Not doing too
well in the marketplace.
* m68k - Motorola 680x0 chips: Ancient Apple computers, Amigas, VME
crate controllers, embedded systems, ...
* powerpc - IBM's PowerPC chips: Modern Apple computers, some IBM
workstations (usually originally running AIX, I think?)
* s390 - IBM's mainframes: "big iron."
* mips, mipsel, hppa - These I'm not too clear on.
Architectures for which there exist Debian packages, but not officially
supported by Debian:
* amd64 (formerly x86-64) - AMD's 64-bit Opteron chip series for
workstations. Intel has either come out with a clone or is soon to do
so. This is rapidly growing in popularity and will almost certainly be
supported in the next Debian release after Sarge.
* sh (sh3,sh4) - SuperH chips from Hitachi, mostly found in some gaming
consoles. Not clear if Debian will ever officially support it due to
the rarity and slowness of the machines.
There are also "hurd-i386" and "bsd-i386" which are using kernels other
than the Linux kernel, running on Intel 32-bit machines. These are sort
of experimental at the moment.
regards,
--
Kevin B. McCarty <kmccarty@princeton.edu> Physics Department
WWW: http://www.princeton.edu/~kmccarty/ Princeton University
GPG public key ID: 4F83C751 Princeton, NJ 08544
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