Check also the section on Supported CPUs for which processor types are supported, if you are using a platform for which multiple CPU options exist.
See below for the following categories of platforms
The following list covers development boards for which there is active support for the port, and which are maintained continuously. Expect these ports to work reliably. Refer also the the section on commercial Linux ports - these companies may provide additional hardware support.
An evaluation board for the SiByteTM BCM1250 dual processor SOC (system on chip) and is implemented in the standard ATX form factor. A high performance board. See http://www.broadcom.com/ for details.
The MIPS Technologies Malta board and all its CPU options are supported. See the Developers pages under www.mips.com.
The following list covers machines for which there is active support for the port, and which are maintained continuously. Expect these ports to work reliably.
The Cobalt Qube product series are low cost headless server systems based on a IDT R5230. Sun has announced the end of life for the MIPS based Qube and Raq systems but other Linux distributions are supported. Biggest problem with this port is a limit of about 700kB for the size of the boot image. This is a limitation of the firmware and is beginning to seriously bite until somebody develops a workaround.
The following DECstation models are actively supported:
The DECstation family ranges from the DECstation 2100 with an R2000/R2010 chipset at 12 MHz, to the DECstation 5000/260 with a 60 MHz R4400SC. See the section on Legacy Platforms below for other DEC machines. Note: Other x86 and Alpha-based machines were also sold under the name DECstation.
The Indy is currently the best supported Silicon Graphics machine.
Ralf Bächle (ralf@gnu.org) and a team of SGI employees are currently working on a port to the Origin 200. While still in it's early stages, it's running in uniprocessor and multiprocessor mode and has drivers for the built-in IOC3 Ethernet and SCSI hostadapters.
Sony Computer Entertainment have produced a port of Linux for the PlayStation 2 which was released in 2002. For further details and information about obtaining Linux for PlayStation 2, please visit http://playstation2-linux.com.
Another site in Japanese can be found at http://www.ps2linux.com.
The older Sony Playstation is based on an R3000 derivative and uses a set of graphics chips developed by Sony themselves. Sony doesn't support Linux for this system but apparently a Russian group has released a Linux port on www.runix.ru, now http://www.runix.biz/.
The platforms listed here may once have been supported, but there may not have been active maintenance for them. Expect problems with these platforms, and consult the mailing list for information on them.
The Acer PICA is derived from the Mips Magnum 4000 design. It has a R4400PC CPU running at 133MHz or optionally 150MHz plus a 512KB (optionally 2MB) second level cache; the Magnum's G364 gfx card was replaced with a S3 968 based one. The system is supported with the exception of the X server.
The Baget series includes several boxes which have R3000 processors: Baget 23, Baget 63, and Baget 83. Baget 23 and 63 have BT23-201 or BT23-202 motherboards with R3500A (which is basically a R3000A chip) at 25 MHz and R3081E at 50 MHz respectively. The BT23-201 board has VME bus and VIC068, VAC068 chips as system controllers. The BT23-202 board has PCI as internal bus and VME as internal. Support for BT23-201 board has been done by Gleb Raiko (rajko@mech.math.msu.su) and Vladimir Roganov (vroganov@msiu.ru) with a bit of help from Serguei Zimin (zimin@msiu.ru). Support for BT23-202 is under development along with Baget 23B which consists of 3 BT23-201 boards with shared VME bus.
Baget 83 is mentioned here for completeness only. It has only 2MB RAM and it's too small to run Linux. The Baget/MIPS code has been merged with the DECstation port. The source for both is available at http://decstation.unix-ag.org/.
These DECstation models are orphaned because nobody is working on them, but support for them should be relatively easy to achieve.
The other members of the DECstation family, besides the x86 based ones, should be considered as VAXen with the CPU replaced by a MIPS CPU. There is absolutely no information available about these machines and support for them is unlikely to ever happen unless the VAXLinux port comes back to life. These are:
These two machines are almost completely identical. Back during the ACE initiative, Olivetti licensed the Jazz design and marketed the machine with Windows NT as the OS. MIPS Computer Systems, Inc. bought the Jazz design and marketed it as the MIPS Magnum 4000 series of machines. Magnum 4000 systems were marketed with Windows NT and RISC/os as the operating systems.
The firmware on the machine depended on the operating system which was installed. Linux/MIPS supports only the little endian firmware on these two types of machines. Since the M700-10 was only marketed as an NT machine, all M700-10 machines have this firmware installed. The MIPS Magnum case is somewhat more complex. If your machine has been configured big endian for RISC/os, then you need to reload the little endian firmware. This firmware was originally included on a floppy with the delivery of every Magnum. If you don't have the floppy anymore you can download it via anonymous ftp from ftp://ftp.linux-mips.org/pub/linux/mips/misc/magnum-4000.
It is possible to reconfigure the M700 for headless operation by setting the firmware environment variables ConsoleIn and ConsoleOut to multi()serial(0)term(). Also, try the command listdev which will show the available ARC devices.
In some cases, like where the G364 graphics card is missing but the console is still configured to use normal graphics, it will be necessary to set the configuration jumper JP2 on the board. After the next reset, the machine will reboot with the console on COM2.
The MIPS Magnum 4000SC is the same as a Magnum 4000 (see above) with the exception that it uses an R4000SC CPU.
The NEC uniprocessor machines are OEM Acer PICA systems, see that section for details. The SMP systems are different from that. The Linux/MIPS developers have no technical documentation as necessary to write an OS. As long as that does not change, this will pretty much stay a show- stopper, preventing a port to NEC's SMP systems.
The Netpower 100 is apparently an Acer PICA in disguise. It should therefore be supported but this is untested. If there is a problem then it is probably the machine detection.
The Nintendo 64 is R4300-based game console with 4MB RAM. Its graphics chips were developed by Silicon Graphics for Nintendo. Right now this port has pipe dream status and will continue to be in that state until Nintendo decides to publish the necessary technical information. The question remains as to whether porting the Linux/MIPS code to this platform is a good idea.
Linux 2.4 supports the Nino. Support was removed from 2.5 at the request of it's maintainer who does not want to maintain it anymore.
This machine is very similar to the Indy, the differences are that it doesn't have a keyboard or graphics card, but has an additional SCSI WD33C95-based adapter. This WD33C95 hostadapter is currently not supported.
This machine is only being mentioned here because people have occasionally confused it with Indys or the Indigo 2. The Indigo is a different R3000-based architecture however, and is yet unsupported.
This machine is the successor to the Indigo and is very similar to the Indy. It is now supported, but is lacking in several areas. You will have to use serial console. If you have an Indigo2 and still want to run Linux on it, contact either Florian Lohoff (flo@rfc822.org).
The Onyx 2 is basically an Origin 2000 with additional graphics hardware. As of now, writing Linux support for the graphics hardware has not yet been done. Aside from that, Linux should run just as well as on a normal, headless Origin 2000 configuration.
This is a very old series of R3000 SMP systems. There is no hardware documentation for these machines, few of them even exist anymore, and the hardware is weird. In short, the chances that Linux will ever run on them are approximating zero. Not that we want to discourage any takers ...
If your machine has both EISA and PCI slots, then it is an RM200C (please see below). Due to the slight architectural differences of the RM200 and the RM200C, this machine isn't currently supported in the official sources. Michael Engel (engel@numerik.math.uni-siegen.de) has managed to get his RM200 working partially, but the patches haven't yet been included in the official Linux/MIPS sources.
In contrast to the RM200 (see above), this machine has EISA and PCI slots. This machine was somewhat supported in 2.0 and 2.1, then nobody took care of this port for a long time until recently. So it's not usable in 2.2 and 2.4 but works again in 2.6.
The RM300 is technically very similar to the RM200C. It should be supported by the current Linux kernel, but we haven't yet received any reports.
The RM400 isn't supported.
This machine is a OEM variant of the SGI Indigo and therefore also unsupported.
The Linux VR project is porting Linux to devices based on the NEC VR41xx microprocessors. Many of these devices were originally designed to run Windows CE. The project has produced working kernels with basic drivers for the Vadem Clio, Casio E-105, Everex Freestyle, and more. The Linux-VR has developped support for these systems.
Similar to the VR41xx, devices with these processors were originally intended for running Windows CE. However, there are working kernels with basic drivers for Sharp Mobilon and the Compaq C-Series. The Linux-VR has developped support for these systems.
As the name says, these are IBM machines which are based on the RS6000 processor series, and, as such, they're not the subject of the Linux/MIPS project. People frequently confuse the IBM RS6000 with the MIPS R6000 architecture. However, the Linux/PPC project might support these machines. Checkout http://www.penguinppc.org/ for further information.
As the name already implies, this machine is a member of Digital Equipment's VAX family. It's mentioned here because people often confuse it with Digital's MIPS-based DECstation family due to the similar type numbers. These two families of architectures share little technical similarities. These systems are subject of the Linux/VAX project at http://www.linux-vax.org/.
This is actually an x86-based system, therefore not covered by this FAQ. There is some limited Linux support available for the older Visual Workstations. The current series of Visual Workstations is an officially supported SGI product. Please see http://oss.sgi.com and http://www.sgi.com for more information.
Examples are the SGI Iris 1000, Iris 2000 and Iris 3000 series. As these machines are not based on MIPS processors, and therefore not subject of the Linux/MIPS project. In other words if you're looking into this document for more information you're lookin at the wrong place. Also these are very old machines, much more than ten years old by now. As such chances for the to ever be supported a small. For more on Linux on Motorola 68000 based systems see http://www.linux-m68k.org.