Debian "sarge" supports eleven major architectures and several variations of each architecture known as 'flavors'.

This document covers installation for the PowerPC architecture. If you are looking for information on any of the other Debian-supported architectures take a look at the Debian-Ports pages.

There are four major supported powerpc flavors: PMac (Power-Macintosh) PReP, Apus, and CHRP machines. Ports to other powerpc architectures, such as the Be-Box and MBX architecture, are underway but not yet supported by Debian. We may have a 64bit port (Power3) in the future.

Apple (and briefly a few other manufacturers - Power Computing, for example) makes a series of Macintosh computers based on the PowerPC processor. For purposes of architecture support, they are categorized as NuBus, OldWorld PCI, and NewWorld.

Macintosh computers using the 680x0 series of processors are not in the PowerPC family but are instead m68k machines. Those models start with `Mac II' or have a 3-digit model number such as Centris 650 or Quadra 950. Apple's pre-iMac PowerPC model numbers have four digits.

NuBus systems are not currently supported by debian/powerpc. The monolithic Linux/PPC kernel architecture does not have support for these machines; instead, one must use the MkLinux Mach microkernel, which Debian does not yet support. These include the following:

A linux kernel for these machines and limited support is available at http://nubus-pmac.sourceforge.net/

OldWorld systems are most Power Macintoshes with a floppy drive and a PCI bus. Most 603, 603e, 604, and 604e based Power Macintoshes are OldWorld machines. The beige colored G3 systems are also OldWorld.

The so called NewWorld PowerMacs are any PowerMacs in translucent colored plastic cases. That includes all iMacs, iBooks, G4 systems, blue colored G3 systems, and most PowerBooks manufactured in and after 1999. The NewWorld PowerMacs are also known for using the `ROM in RAM' system for MacOS, and were manufactured from mid-1998 onwards.

Recently introduced Macintosh systems have hardware which is more well supported by the 2.4 Linux kernel. For some, the 2.2 kernel just doesn't work. The new-powermac flavor, which uses the 2.4 kernel, has been added to keep up with the hardware. The new-powermac flavor may also be installed on other OldWorld and NewWorld machines. Machines for which new-powermac is highly recommended are flagged with an asterisk below.

Specifications for Apple hardware are available at AppleSpec, and, for older hardware, AppleSpec Legacy.

Debian's support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying support found in XFree86's X11 system. The newer AGP video slots are actually a modification on the PCI specification, and most AGP video cards work under XFree86. Details on supported graphics buses, cards, monitors, and pointing devices can be found at http://www.xfree86.org/. Debian "sarge" ships with XFree86 version 4.3.0.

Multi-processor support — also called ``symmetric multi-processing'' or SMP — is supported for this architecture. However, the standard Debian "sarge" kernel image does not support SMP. This should not prevent installation, since the standard, non-SMP kernel should boot on SMP systems; the kernel will simply use the first CPU.

In order to take advantage of multiple processors, you'll have to replace the standard Debian kernel. You can find a discussion of how to do this in Section 8.4, “Compiling a New Kernel”. At this time (kernel version 2.4.25) the way you enable SMP is to select ``symmetric multi-processing'' in the ``General'' section of the kernel config.