Debian GNU/Linux 13 supports 9 major architectures and several variations of each architecture known as “flavors”.

This document covers installation for the 64-bit PC architecture using the kFreeBSD kernel. If you are looking for information on any of the other Debian-supported architectures take a look at the Debian-Ports pages.

Multiprocessor support — also called “symmetric multiprocessing” or SMP — is available for this architecture. The standard Debian 13 kernel image has been compiled with SMP-alternatives support. This means that the kernel will detect the number of processors (or processor cores) and will automatically deactivate SMP on uniprocessor systems.

Having multiple processors in a computer was originally only an issue for high-end server systems but has become common in recent years nearly everywhere with the introduction of so called “multi-core” processors. These contain two or more processor units, called “cores”, in one physical chip.

Debian's support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying support found in X.Org's X11 system, and the kernel. Basic framebuffer graphics is provided by the kernel, whilst desktop environments use X11. Whether advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional “firmware” blobs (see 節 2.2, “Devices Requiring Firmware”).

Details on supported graphics hardware and pointing devices can be found at https://wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/. Debian 13 ships with X.Org version 7.7.

Almost any network interface card (NIC) supported by the kFreeBSD kernel should also be supported by the installation system; drivers should normally be loaded automatically.

kFreeBSD supports a large variety of hardware devices such as mice, printers, scanners, PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard and USB devices. However, most of these devices are not required while installing the system.