Supported Hardware
AcademiX 2 supported all the different hardware configurations for 64-bit PC , this section contains general information and pointers to where additional information can be found.
Supported Architectures
Architecture Debian Designation Subarchitecture/ Flavor
AMD64 & Intel 64 amd64
64bit ARM arm64
64bit MIPS mips64el MIPS Malta/5kc-malta
64bit MIPS mips64el Cavium Octeon/ octeon
64bit MIPS mips64el Loongson 3 / loongson-3
Power Systems ppc64el IBM POWER8 or newer machines
64bit IBM S/390 s390x IPL from VM-reader and DASD
This document covers installation for the 64-bit PC architecture using the Linux kernel.
CPU Support
Both AMD64 and Intel 64 processors are supported.
Graphics Hardware Support
AcademiX 2 support for graphical interfaces is determined by the underlying support found in X.Org’s X11 system, and the kernel. Basic framebuffer graphics is provided by the kernel, whilst desktop environments use X11. Whether advanced graphics card features such as 3D-hardware acceleration or hardware-accelerated video are available, depends on the actual graphics hardware used in the system and in some cases on the installation of additional “firmware” images
On modern PCs, having a graphical display usually works out of the box. In very few cases there have been reports about hardware on which installation of additional graphics card firmware was required even for basic graphics support, but these have been rare exceptions. For quite a lot of hardware, 3D acceleration also works well out of the box, but there is still some hardware that needs binary blobs to work well.
Details on supported graphics hardware and pointing devices can be found at https://wiki.freedesktop.org/xorg/.
Network Connectivity Hardware
Almost any network interface card (NIC) supported by the Linux kernel should also be supported by the installation system; drivers should normally be loaded automatically. This includes most PCI/PCI-Express cards as well as PCMCIA/Express Cards on laptops.
ISDN is supported, but not during the installation.
Wireless Network Cards
Wireless networking is in general supported as well and a growing number of wireless adapters are supported by the official Linux kernel, although many of them do require firmware to be loaded.
If firmware is needed, the installer will prompt you to load firmware.
Wireless NICs that are not supported by the official Linux kernel can generally be made to work under AcademiX GNU/Linux, but are not supported during the installation.
If there is a problem with wireless and there is no other NIC you can use during the installation, it is still possible to install AcademiX GNU/Linux using a full CD-ROM or DVD image. Select the option to not configure a network and install using only the packages available from the CD/DVD. You can then install the driver and firmware you need after the installation is completed (after the reboot) and configure your network manually.
In some cases the driver you need may not be available as a Debian package. You will then have to look if there is source code available in the internet and compile the driver yourself. How to do this is outside the scope of this manual. If no Linux driver is available, your last resort is to use the ndiswrapper package, which allows you to use a Windows driver.
Peripherals and Other Hardware
Linux supports a large variety of hardware devices such as mice, printers, scanners, PCMCIA/CardBus/ExpressCard and USB devices. However, most of these devices are not required while installing the system.
USB hardware generally works fine. On some very old PC systems some USB keyboards may require additional configuration
On modern PCs, USB keyboards and mice work without requiring any specific configuration.