Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For Alpha
Footnotes

1

Note that the Debian project, as a pragmatic concession to its users, does make some packages available that do not meet our criteria for being free. These packages are not part of the official distribution, however, and are only available from the contrib or non-free areas of Debian mirrors or on third-party CD-ROMs; see the Debian FAQ, under ``The Debian FTP archives'', for more information about the layout and contents of the archives.

2

For information on how to locate, unpack, and build binaries from Debian source packages, see the Debian FAQ, under ``Basics of the Debian Package Management System''.

3

Alpha systems can also be net-booted using the DECNet MOP (Maintenance Operations Protocol), but this is not covered here. Presumably, your local OpenVMS operator will be happy to assist you should you have some burning need to use MOP to boot Linux on your Alpha.

4

Specifically, the bootsector format required by the Console Subsystem Specification conflicts with the placement of the DOS partition table.

5

Except on Jensen, where Linux is not supported on firmware versions newer than 1.7 - see http://www.linuxalpha.org/faq/FAQ-9.html for more information

6

Technically, it's being mounted at /target; when you reboot into the system itself, that will become /.

7

Note that the actual program that installs packages is called dpkg. However, this package is more of a low-level tool. apt-get will invoke dpkg as appropriate; it is a higher-level too, however, because it knows to install other packages which are required for the package you're trying to install, as well as how to retrieve the package from your CD, the network, or wherever.

Installing Debian GNU/Linux 3.0 For Alpha