Debian GNU/Linux includes complete source-code for all of the included
programs, so it should work on all systems which are supported by the Linux
kernel; see the Linux
FAQ for details.
The current Debian GNU/Linux release, 2.2, contains a complete, binary distribution for the following architectures:
i386: this covers PCs based on Intel and compatible processors, including Intel's 386, 486, Pentium, Pentium Pro, Pentium II (both Klamath and Celeron), and Pentium III, and most compatible processors by AMD, Cyrix and others.
m68k: this covers Amigas and ATARIs having a Motorola 680x0 processor for x>=2; with MMU.
alpha: Compaq/Digital's Alpha systems.
sparc: this covers Sun's SPARC and most UltraSPARC systems.
powerpc: this covers some IBM/Motorola PowerPC machines, including CHRP, PowerMac and PReP machines.
arm: ARM and StrongARM machines.
The development of binary distributions of Debian for Sparc64 (UltraSPARC native) and MIPS architectures is currently underway.
For further information on booting, partitioning your drive, enabling PCMCIA
(PC Card) devices and similar issues please follow the instructions given in
the Installation Manual, which is available from our WWW site at http://www.debian.org/releases/stable/i386/install.
Debian developers communicate with other Linux distribution creators in an effort to maintain binary compatibility across Linux distributions. Most commercial Linux products run as well under Debian as they do on the system upon which they were built.
Debian GNU/Linux adheres to the Linux Filesystem Hierarchy
Standard. However, there is room for interpretation in some of the
rules within this standard, so there may be slight differences between a Debian
system and other Linux systems.
For most applications Linux source code is compatible with other Unix systems. It supports almost everything that is available in System V Unix systems and the free and commercial BSD-derived systems. However in the Unix business such claim has nearly no value because there is no way to prove it. In the software development area complete compatibility is required instead of compatibility in "about most" cases. So years ago the need for standards arose, and nowadays POSIX.1 (IEEE Standard 1003.1-1990) is one of the major standards for source code compatibility in Unix-like operating systems.
Linux is intended to adhere to POSIX.1, but the POSIX standards cost real money and the POSIX.1 (and FIPS 151-2) certification is quite expensive; this made it more difficult for the Linux developers to work on complete POSIX conformance. The certification costs make it unlikely that Debian will get an official conformance certification even if it completely passed the validation suite. (The validation suite is now freely available, so it is expected that more people will work on POSIX.1 issues.)
Unifix GmbH (Braunschwe