Ports to Other Processors

Ports to Other Processors

The Web site, Overview of Linux Ports:
http://www.itp.uni-hannover.de/~kreutzm/de/lin_plattforms.html
provides a listing of known ports.

Another site with a list of ports is:
http://lodda.igo.uni-hannover.de/ports/linux_ports.html

In addition, the following information is available about specific
ports:

On Intel platforms, VESA Local Bus and PCI bus are supported.

MCA (IBM's proprietary bus) and ESDI hard drives are mostly supported.
There is further information on the MCA bus and what cards Linux
supports on the Micro Channel Linux Web page,
http://www.dgmicro.com/mca. Refer also to the answer for: "Where Is
the Linux Stuff on the World Wide Web?"

There is a port of Linux to the 8086, known as the Embeddable Linux
Kernel Subset (ELKS). This is a 16-bit subset of the Linux kernel
which will mainly be used for embedded systems, at:
http://www.linux.org.uk/Linux8086.html. Standard Linux does not run
8086 or 80286 processors, because it requires task-switching and
memory management facilities found on 80386 and later processors.

Linux supports multiprocessing with Intel MP architecture. See the
file Documentation/smp.tex in the Linux kernel source code
distribution.

A project has been underway for a while to port Linux to suitable
68000-series based systems like Amigas and Ataris. The Linux/m68K FAQ
is located at http://www.clark.net/pub/lawrencc/linux/faq/faq.html.
The URL of the Linux/m68k home page is
http://www.linux-m68k.org/faq/faq.html.

There is a m68k port for the Amiga by Jes Sorensen, which is located
at ftp://sunsite.auc.dk/pub/os/linux/680x0/redhat/. The installation
FAQ for the package, by Ron Flory, is at
http://www.feist.com/~rjflory/linux/rh/.

There is also a linux-680x0 mailing list. ("What Mailing Lists Are
There?")

There is (or was) a FTP site for the Linux-m68k project on
ftp.phil.uni-sb.de/pub/atari/linux-68k, but this address may no longer
be current.

Debian GNU/Linux is being ported to Alpha, Sparc, PowerPC, and ARM
platforms. There are mailing lists for all of them. See
http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe

One of the Linux-PPC project pages has moved recently. Its location is
http://www.debian.org/MailingLists/subscribe. http://www.linuxppc.org,
and the archive site is ftp://ftp.linuxppc.org/linuxppc.

There is a Linux-PPC support page at http://www.cs.nmt.edu/~linuxppc/.
There you will find the kernel that is distributed with Linux.

There are two sites for the Linux iMac port:
http://w3.one.net/~johnb/imaclinux, and
http://www.imaclinux.net:8080/content/index.html.

A port to the 64-bit DEC Alpha/AXP is at
http://www.azstarnet.com/~axplinux/. There is a mailing list at
vger.redhat.com: ("What Mailing Lists Are There?")

Ralf Baechle is working on a port to the MIPS, initially for the R4600
on Deskstation Tyne machines. The Linux-MIPS FTP sites are
ftp://ftp.fnet.fr/linux-mips and
ftp://ftp.linux.sgi.com/pub/mips-linux. Interested people may mail
their questions and offers of assistance to linux@waldorf-gmbh.de.

There is (or was) also a MIPS channel on the Linux Activists mail
server and a linux-mips mailing list. ("What Mailing Lists Are
There?")

There are currently two ports of Linux to the ARM family of
processors. One of these is for the ARM3, fitted to the Acorn A5000,
and it includes I/O drivers for the 82710/11 as appropriate. The other
is to the ARM610 of the Acorn RISC PC. The RISC PC port is currently
in its early to middle stages, owing to the need to rewrite much of
the memory handling. The A5000 port is in restricted beta testing. A
release is likely soon.

For more, up-to-date information, read the newsgroup
comp.sys.acorn.misc. There is a FAQ at http://www.arm.uk.linux.org.

The Linux SPARC project is a hotbed of activity. There is a FAQ and
plenty of other information available from the UltraLinux page,
http://www.ultralinux.org/.

The Home Page of the UltraSPARC port ("UltraPenguin") is located at
http://sunsite.mff.cuni.cz/linux/ultrapenguin-1.0/, although the URL
may not be current.

There is also a port to SGI/Indy machines ("Hardhat"). The URL is
http://www.linux.sgi.com/.


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