Alpha/Linux Wiki

Alpha is supported in the main development trees of the Linux kernel, GCC, binutils, glibc, and QEMU, and three distributions produce current Alpha releases. What Alpha lacks is support in the newer parts of the toolchain, above all LLVM, and everything that depends on it.

This page summarizes the state of the port as of September 2026. Recent changes are listed in the News on the front page, and work in progress on the To Do list. Known problems that affect Linux on Alpha across projects are tracked in alphalinux/issues; see also Bugs.

Since Linux 6.10, released in July 2024, the kernel requires an EV56 (21164A) or later processor, because it needs the byte/word extension (BWX) to make byte and word stores atomic. ^{1) 2)}

Linux 6.9 is the last kernel for the EV4, EV45, and EV5 processors and for the systems that can only use them, among them the Jensen, the Multia, the AlphaStation 200 to 400, and the EB164. The full list is under Operating Systems, and the reasoning under Byte and Word Access. Systems sold with EV5 processors that also accept EV56 processors, such as the AlphaStation 500 and 600, still run current kernels once the processor is upgraded.

Debian's GCC has also produced EV56 code by default since May 2023, and T2's Alpha images are built for EV56. See Selecting a processor.

Current kernels include support for every platform that has an EV56 (21164A) or later processor. The Systems and Motherboards tables give the status of each system and board, and Other Hardware lists the expansion cards known to work. The main caveats are:

• Boot firmware. Linux boots from the SRM console with aboot. The few supported systems without SRM, the Alpha XL 366 and 433 (XLT), the AlphaPC 164UX (Ruffian), and the AlphaPC 164RX, can boot only through MILO. Released versions of MILO cannot load kernels from Linux 2.6.23 onward, which contain a PT_NOTE program header. A fix was made in 2026, but has not yet been reported working on these systems. ³⁾
• Titan, Wildfire, and Marvel. A generic kernel for the DS15, DS25, ES45, GS80, GS160, GS320, ES47, ES80, or GS1280 must be built with CONFIG_ALPHA_LEGACY_START_ADDRESS turned off, because a kernel built with it leaves these platforms out. The kernel's defconfig turns the option on. ^{4) 5)} See Kernel. Debian's kernel, the alpha-generic flavor that its installer also uses, is built with the option off, ^{6) 7)} and so is Gentoo's gentoo-kernel, which takes Debian's configuration. ⁸⁾ Gentoo's minimal install CD boots a kernel built with the option by default, and also carries gentoo_nolsa, built without it for these platforms. ^{9) 10)} See Installation: Distribution kernels. The Wildfire systems (GS80, GS160, and GS320) have not been reported running Linux since the 2.6 series; see Wildfire.
• Multiprocessor systems run SMP kernels from SRM.
• Graphics. ATI Radeon cards with the radeon kernel modesetting driver are the only graphics cards known to work with current X.Org; see Other Hardware: Graphics. ¹¹⁾

Anyone who can test a current kernel on a system marked "Untested" is asked to report the result to the linux-alpha list; see Community.

• Stale TLB entries. After a copy-on-write fault, the kernel can invalidate the wrong address space context and leave a stale translation in the TLB, which can then corrupt memory. Patches were sent to the linux-alpha list in August 2026, ¹²⁾ and are not in Linux 7.3-rc1.
• Memory compaction. Kernels built with CONFIG_COMPACTION have shown rare, random memory corruption on Alpha, ¹³⁾ and Debian's Alpha kernel has been built without it since February 2025. ¹⁴⁾ A kernel configured by hand should leave it off.

The main risk to the port is in GCC: its Alpha back end must move to the LRA register allocator to stay in GCC once the old reload pass is removed, and that work is under way. ¹⁸⁾ Other recent work, such as SECCOMP support in Linux 7.1 and stack protector and IFUNC support in GCC and binutils, is listed in the News.

Three distributions produce current Alpha releases: Gentoo, whose Alpha profiles have been stable since August 2024 although every package is keyworded unstable; Debian, as an unofficial port in Debian Ports, built for unstable (sid); and T2 SDE, built for EV56. Their install media, and the distributions that supported Alpha in the past, are listed under Distributions.

A graphical desktop runs on X.Org with a Radeon card (see Hardware), but with fewer programs than on other architectures. Firefox and Chromium are not available. Debian Ports' Alpha archive has packages for the Xfce, MATE, LXQt, and LXDE desktops and for the NetSurf, Dillo, and Epiphany browsers, but none for Firefox, Chromium, or rustc. ¹⁹⁾ Gentoo keywords no graphical web browser or desktop environment for Alpha, only text-mode browsers such as Links, Lynx, w3m, and ELinks, and window managers such as Fluxbox and Window Maker. ²⁰⁾

NetBSD and OpenBSD support Alpha in their current releases, and VMS Software Inc. (VSI) sells and supports OpenVMS on Alpha. See Operating Systems for their versions and the history of each.

• LLVM, and so Clang. LLVM has had no Alpha back end since 2011, ²¹⁾ so there is no Clang for Alpha, and the kernel cannot be built with LLVM=1. Parts of the LLVM project that do not generate code can still support Alpha; the sanitizer runtimes gained Alpha support in 2026.
• Rust. The Rust compiler generates code through LLVM and has no Alpha target. ²²⁾ Two projects could provide one through GCC instead: rustc_codegen_gcc, a GCC back end for rustc, where Alpha support is being worked on, ²³⁾ and gccrs, the Rust front end in GCC, which is still under development. Software that requires Rust, such as the Python cryptography package, is therefore unavailable on Alpha or held at an older version. The kernel's Rust support is likewise unavailable.
• musl. The musl C library has no Alpha port, ²⁴⁾ so Alpine Linux and other musl-based distributions cannot be built for Alpha. glibc is the only C library for Alpha/Linux.
• Go, and other languages with their own code generators. The Go toolchain and many JIT compilers, such as the JavaScript engines in web browsers, have no Alpha code generator. gccgo builds Go code on Alpha, but its library is that of Go 1.18, so software that needs a newer Go release does not build with it. ²⁵⁾ A JIT for PCRE2, through sljit, was added in 2026.
• A vDSO. Alpha has no vDSO, so time functions are real system calls. See Linux ABI Differences.

Work under way on some of these, such as a GCC-based Rust compiler, is on the To Do list.