| 2.1. Supported Hardware | ||
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Chapter 2. System Requirements | 
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| 2.1. Supported Hardware | ||
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Chapter 2. System Requirements |
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Debian does not impose hardware requirements beyond the requirements of the Linux kernel and the GNU tool-sets. Therefore, any architecture or platform to which the Linux kernel, libc, gcc, etc. have been ported, and for which a Debian port exists, can run Debian. Please refer to the Ports pages at https://www.debian.org/ports/arm/ for more details on 32-bit hard-float ARMv7 architecture systems which have been tested with Debian GNU/Linux.
Rather than attempting to describe all the different hardware configurations which are supported for 32-bit hard-float ARMv7, this section contains general information and pointers to where additional information can be found.
Debian GNU/Linux 13 supports 9 major architectures and several variations of each architecture known as “flavors”.
| Architecture | Debian Designation | Subarchitecture | Flavor |
|---|---|---|---|
| AMD64 & Intel 64 | amd64 | ||
| Intel x86-based | i386 | default x86 machines | default |
| Xen PV domains only | xen | ||
| ARM | armel | Marvell Kirkwood and Orion | marvell |
| ARM with hardware FPU | armhf | multiplatform | armmp |
| 64bit ARM | arm64 | ||
| 64bit MIPS (little-endian) | mips64el | MIPS Malta | 5kc-malta |
| Cavium Octeon | octeon | ||
| Loongson 3 | loongson-3 | ||
| 32bit MIPS (little-endian) | mipsel | MIPS Malta | 4kc-malta |
| Cavium Octeon | octeon | ||
| Loongson 3 | loongson-3 | ||
| Power Systems | ppc64el | IBM POWER8 or newer machines | |
| 64bit IBM S/390 | s390x | IPL from VM-reader and DASD | generic |
This document covers installation for the 32-bit hard-float ARMv7 architecture using the Linux kernel. If you are looking for information on any of the other Debian-supported architectures take a look at the Debian-Ports pages.
The ARM architecture has evolved over time and modern ARM processors provide features which are not available in older models. Debian therefore provides three ARM ports to give the best support for a very wide range of different machines:
Debian/armel targets older 32-bit ARM processors without support for a hardware floating point unit (FPU),
Debian/armhf works only on newer 32-bit ARM processors which implement at least the ARMv7 architecture with version 3 of the ARM vector floating point specification (VFPv3). It makes use of the extended features and performance enhancements available on these models.
Debian/arm64 works on 64-bit ARM processors which implement at least the ARMv8 architecture.
Technically, all currently available ARM CPUs can be run in either endian mode (big or little), but in practice the vast majority use little-endian mode. All of Debian/arm64, Debian/armhf and Debian/armel support only little-endian systems.
ARM systems are much more heterogeneous than those based on the i386/amd64-based PC architecture, so the support situation can be much more complicated.
The ARM architecture is used mainly in so-called “system-on-chip” (SoC) designs. These SoCs are designed by many different companies with vastly varying hardware components even for the very basic functionality required to bring the system up. System firmware interfaces have been increasingly standardised over time, but especially on older hardware firmware/boot interfaces vary a great deal, so on these systems the Linux kernel has to take care of many system-specific low-level issues which would be handled by the mainboard's BIOS/UEFI in the PC world.
At the beginning of the ARM support in the Linux kernel, the hardware variety resulted in the requirement of having a separate kernel for each ARM system in contrast to the “one-fits-all” kernel for PC systems. As this approach does not scale to a large number of different systems, work was done to allow booting with a single ARM kernel that can run on different ARM systems. Support for newer ARM systems is now implemented in a way that allows the use of such a multiplatform kernel, but for several older systems a separate specific kernel is still required. Because of this, the standard Debian distribution only supports installation on a selected number of such older ARM systems, alongside the newer systems which are supported by the ARM multiplatform kernels (called “armmp”) in Debian/armhf.
The following systems are known to work with Debian/armhf using the multiplatform (armmp) kernel:
The IMX53QSB is a development board based on the i.MX53 SoC.
The Versatile Express is a development board series from ARM consisting of a baseboard which can be equipped with various CPU daughter boards.
The armmp kernel supports several development boards and embedded systems based on the Allwinner A10 (architecture codename “sun4i”), A10s/A13 (architecture codename “sun5i”), A20 (architecture codename “sun7i”), A31/A31s (architecture codename “sun6i”) and A23/A33 (part of the “sun8i” family) SoCs. Full installer support (including provision of ready-made SD card images with the installer) is currently available for the following sunXi-based systems:
Cubietech Cubieboard 1 + 2 / Cubietruck
LeMaker Banana Pi and Banana Pro
LinkSprite pcDuino and pcDuino3
Olimex A10-Olinuxino-LIME / A20-Olinuxino-LIME / A20-Olinuxino-LIME2 / A20-Olinuxino Micro / A20-SOM-EVB
Xunlong OrangePi Plus
System support for Allwinner sunXi-based devices is limited to drivers and device-tree information available in the mainline Linux kernel. Vendor-specific kernel trees (such as the Allwinner SDK kernels) and the android-derived linux-sunxi.org kernel 3.4 series are not supported by Debian.
The mainline Linux kernel generally supports serial console, ethernet, SATA, USB and MMC/SD-cards on Allwinner A10, A10s/A13, A20, A23/A33 and A31/A31s SoCs. The level of support for local display (HDMI/VGA/LCD) and audio hardware varies between individual systems. For most systems, the kernel doesn't have native graphics drivers but instead uses the “simplefb” infrastructure in which the bootloader initializes the display and the kernel just re-uses the pre-initialized framebuffer. This generally works reasonably well, although it results in certain limitations (the display resolution cannot be changed on the fly and display powermanagement is not possible).
Onboard flash memory intended to be used as a mass storage device generally exists in two basic variants on sunXi-based systems: raw NAND flash and eMMC flash. Most older sunXi-based boards with onboard flash storage use raw NAND flash for which support is not generally available in the mainline kernel and therefore also not in Debian. A number of newer systems use eMMC flash instead of raw NAND flash. An eMMC flash chip basically appears as a fast, non-removable SD card and is supported in the same way as a regular SD card.
The installer includes basic support for a number of sunXi-based systems not listed above, but it is largely untested on those systems as the Debian project doesn't have access to the corresponding hardware. No pre-built SD card images with the installer are provided for those systems. Development boards with such limited support include:
Olimex A10s-Olinuxino Micro / A13-Olinuxino / A13-Olinuxino Micro
Sinovoip BPI-M2 (A31s-based)
Xunlong Orange Pi (A20-based) / Orange Pi Mini (A20-based)
In addition to the SoCs and systems listed above, the installer has very limited support for the Allwinner H3 SoC and a number of boards based on it. Mainline kernel support for the H3 is still largely work in progress at the time of the Debian 9 release freeze, so the installer only supports serial console, MMC/SD and the USB host controller on H3-based systems. There is no driver for the on-board ethernet port of the H3 yet, so networking is only possible with a USB ethernet adaptor or a USB wifi dongle. Systems based on the H3 for which such very basic installer support is available include:
FriendlyARM NanoPi NEO
Xunlong Orange Pi Lite / Orange Pi One / Orange Pi PC / Orange Pi PC Plus / Orange Pi Plus / Orange Pi Plus 2E / Orange Pi 2
The NVIDIA Jetson TK1 is a developer board based on the Tegra K1 chip (also known as Tegra 124). The Tegra K1 features a quad-core 32-bit ARM Cortex-A15 CPU and Kepler GPU (GK20A) with 192 CUDA cores. Other systems based on the Tegra 124 may work, too.
The Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate NAS are NAS devices based on Marvell's Armada 370 platform. Debian supports the Personal Cloud (SRN21C), Personal Cloud 2-Bay (SRN22C), Seagate NAS 2-Bay (SRPD20) and Seagate NAS 4-Bay (SRPD40).
The Cubox-i series is a set of small, cubical-shaped systems based on the Freescale i.MX6 SoC family. System support for the Cubox-i series is limited to drivers and device-tree information available in the mainline Linux kernel; the Freescale 3.0 kernel series for the Cubox-i is not supported by Debian. Available drivers in the mainline kernel include serial console, ethernet, USB, MMC/SD-card and display support over HDMI (console and X11). In addition to that, the eSATA port on the Cubox-i4Pro is supported.
The Wandboard Quad, Dual and Solo are development boards based on the Freescale i.MX6 Quad SoC. System support is limited to drivers and device-tree information available in the mainline Linux kernel; the wandboard-specific 3.0 and 3.10 kernel series from wandboard.org are not supported by Debian. The mainline kernel includes driver support for serial console, display via HDMI (console and X11), ethernet, USB, MMC/SD, SATA (Quad only) and analog audio. Support for the other audio options (S/PDIF, HDMI-Audio) and for the onboard WLAN/Bluetooth module is untested or not available in Debian 9.
Generally, the ARM multiplatform support in the Linux kernel
allows running debian-installer on armhf systems not explicitly listed above,
as long as the kernel used by debian-installer has support for the target
system's components and a device-tree file for the target is
available. In these cases, the installer can usually provide a
working installation, but it may not be able to automatically make
the system bootable. Doing that in many cases requires
device-specific information.
When using debian-installer on such systems, you may have to manually make
the system bootable at the end of the installation, e.g. by
running the required commands in a shell started from within
debian-installer.
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 Section 2.2, “Devices Requiring Firmware”).
Nearly all ARM machines have the graphics hardware built-in, rather than being on a plug-in card. Some machines do have expansion slots which will take graphics cards, but that is a rarity. Hardware designed to be headless with no graphics at all is quite common. Whilst basic framebuffer video provided by the kernel should work on all devices that have graphics, fast 3D graphics invariably needs binary drivers to work. The situation is changing quickly but at the time of the trixie release free drivers for nouveau (Nvidia Tegra K1 SoC) and freedreno (Qualcomm Snapdragon SoCs) are available in the release. Other hardware needs non-free drivers from 3rd parties.
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 Linux kernel should also be supported by the installation system; drivers should normally be loaded automatically.
On 32-bit hard-float ARMv7, most built-in Ethernet devices are supported and modules for additional PCI and USB devices are provided.
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| Chapter 2. System Requirements |  |
2.2. Devices Requiring Firmware |