Welcome to the Alpha/Linux Wiki
Alpha/Linux is a port of Linux to the Alpha architecture.
Alpha is supported in mainline Linux, GCC, binutils, glibc, and QEMU. Gentoo, Debian Ports, and T2 SDE produce current releases. Current kernels require an EV56 (21164A) or later processor; see Current Status for what works today and what is missing.
Getting started: check that the system is supported in the Systems table, then follow Installation. Without Alpha hardware, QEMU runs current distributions. Questions are welcome on the mailing lists, IRC, and GitHub Discussions, and many are answered in the FAQ.
Software
Operating Systems • Distributions • Boot Loaders • Firmware • Emulators
Hardware
Systems • Motherboards • CPUs • Chipsets • Other
Documentation
Current Status • FAQ • Glossary • Installation • QEMU • Kernel • Using SRM • Porting • Toolchains • Instruction Set • References
Tasks
Community
Mailing Lists • IRC • Forums • Contributing
History
Linux Port • Companies • Community • News Coverage • alphalinux.org
News
| 2026-09-25 | The wiki was rebuilt on DokuWiki, replacing the MediaWiki installation that ran alphalinux.org until 2012. |
| 2026-09-21 | GCC can expand fpclassify and related builtins inline on Alpha, with patches implementing Alpha's FP classification optabs (PR66462) by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-09-13 | A DEC Alpha BCJ filter for liblzma, which would let xz compress Alpha binaries better, was proposed by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-09-12 | PCRE2's just-in-time regex compiler now generates native Alpha code, after Alpha JIT support by Matt Turner was merged. |
| 2026-09-10 | Alpha architecture detection for Boost was proposed by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-09-06 | glibc emits Alpha's divide-by-zero handler once per link, in a comdat group, instead of pulling in a copy per translation unit (BZ #20543); fix by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-09-05 | aboot 2.0 was released by Matt Turner, adding XFS and ext4 support by Magnus Lindholm, so that Alpha systems can boot from either file system. |
| 2026-08-31 | The binutils Alpha back end gained IFUNC symbol support, letting the linker resolve indirect functions in both PIC and non-PIC links; patches by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-29 | GCC's Alpha back end gained -fstack-protector support; patches by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-18 | GCC honors -frounding-math on Alpha, selecting the dynamic rounding mode instead of assuming round-to-nearest; patch by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-18 | Alpha moved toward the kernel's generic entry infrastructure, gaining lockdep hardirq tracking, ARCH_STACKWALK-based stack traces, and regset-based ptrace; patches by Magnus Lindholm, merged for Linux 7.3. |
| 2026-08-16 | The ghidra-alpha processor module for Ghidra gained semantics fixes, a gp-relative reference analyzer, and Windows NT calling-convention fixes (#1, #4, #6), contributed by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-12 | GCC enables IFUNC support for alpha-linux, the compiler half of Alpha's IFUNC support; patch by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-10 | Patches fixing stale TLB translations, which could corrupt memory through copy-on-write and shared-mapping writeback, were sent by Magnus Lindholm. |
| 2026-08-10 | glibc on Alpha now uses the generic gethostname, and a stack alignment bug in makecontext is fixed; patches by Magnus Lindholm. |
| 2026-08-09 | GCC rounds to odd before narrowing Alpha's TFmode to SFmode, avoiding double rounding; patch by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-08-01 | sljit, the base of PCRE2's JIT, gained an Alpha JIT back end, written by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-07-25 | gperftools gained basic Alpha support, added by Michael Cree. |
| 2026-07-15 | Adding -mlra and enabling LRA by default on BWX targets in GCC's Alpha back end was proposed by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-07-15 | GCC's LRA pass now marks the hard frame pointer live when it decides one is needed, fixing a miscompile that broke Alpha's Modula-2 bootstrap (PR117184); fix by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-07-07 | procps' pmap test suite passes on Alpha, which has a heap mapping but no vDSO or vsyscall page; fix by Craig Small. |
| 2026-07-06 | umockdev detects the C library name correctly on Alpha; fix by Michael Cree. |
| 2026-06-20 | Several Alpha decoder bugs in Capstone were fixed, with new test coverage, by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-05-28 | The sanitizer runtimes in LLVM's compiler-rt gained Alpha support; patches by Matt Turner. |
| 2026-04-17 | Alpha gained SECCOMP and SECCOMP_FILTER support, and runs the seccomp-bpf selftests; patches by Magnus Lindholm, merged for Linux 7.1. |
| 2026-04-09 | libunwind gained Alpha architecture support, enabling stack unwinding on Alpha; patches by Matt Turner. |
| 2025-11-04 | Magnus Lindholm became a maintainer of the Alpha architecture in the Linux kernel. |