[HN Gopher] Debian adds LoongArch as officially supported archit...
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Debian adds LoongArch as officially supported architecture
Author : cbmuser
Score : 138 points
Date : 2025-12-20 07:47 UTC (3 days ago)
(HTM) web link (lists.debian.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (lists.debian.org)
| renewiltord wrote:
| Wow man. Back in the day the Godson processors were supposed to
| be these MIPS chips from China that ran Linux. I wanted one just
| for the sheer curiosity of it all but couldn't get one here in
| the US.
|
| I wonder if there is a way to get them from Taiwan / Korea. I
| can't go to mainland China.
| cbmuser wrote:
| You can buy LoongArch hardware on AliExpress, for example.
| renewiltord wrote:
| Always thought they'd ship me garbage. Not sure why. I've
| bought lots of stuff there. But I don't know how to tell it's
| not some rebadged Via chip before it arrives. Just the game,
| I suppose. To Aliexpress!
| suprjami wrote:
| Buy from listings with many sales and good reviews.
|
| Look for reviews with real images and real seeming phrases
| in many languages, not 10 accounts all posting the same
| phrase with no pictures.
|
| Buy from stores with a name, preferably who have
| established a "brand" for themselves across many products.
| UGreen are a great example of this for USB gadgets.
|
| Don't buy from stores named Shop195772040, these will take
| your money and disappear or ship fakes. Don't buy
| suspiciously cheap items with no sales, these will do the
| same.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I don't think LoongArch is the same thing with MIPS according
| to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loongson
| pantalaimon wrote:
| MIPS ist dead, so not much gain in keeping compatibility
| with it anymore.
| csmantle wrote:
| There seems to be a community-run site about this:
|
| https://loongfans.cn/en/pages/intro.html#i-m-sold-where-can-...
| Kwpolska wrote:
| This site links to https://areweloongyet.com/en/
|
| > Even though the Loongson Corporation has yet to release the
| remaining volumes of the LoongArch manual, thanks to a wealth
| of public information such as publicly available QEMU and
| Linux changes, "undisclosed" information such as instruction
| encoding and behaviors is, in effect, already public. The
| absence of manuals can no longer hinder optimization efforts
| by The People.
|
| If the architecture is still undocumented, I would not
| consider Debian's move to be wise.
| budududuroiu wrote:
| I want one of these chips
| pantalaimon wrote:
| https://aliexpress.com/item/1005009389019899.html
| basemi wrote:
| For the curious:
|
| https://loongson.github.io/LoongArch-Documentation/LoongArch...
|
| https://docs.kernel.org/arch/loongarch/introduction.html
| EricRiese wrote:
| > The development of the first Loongson chip was started in 2001.
| The aim of the Godson project was to develop "high performance
| general-purpose microprocessors in China", and to become
| technologically self-sufficient as part of the Made in China 2025
| plan.
|
| -Wikipedia
|
| Right on time
| em500 wrote:
| I thought they pivoted to RISC-V
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RISC-V#Strategic_background
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Nah it's much easier to move fast if you don't rely on a
| committee.
| Neywiny wrote:
| I think it depends on your skillset and goals. If you want
| to run other peoples' software and compilers and whatnot,
| it doesn't hurt to implement to an existing spec. If you're
| going to write your own or need a lot of mods, may as well
| roll your own architecture.
| pantalaimon wrote:
| If you have the manpower to push support for the
| foundations upstream, the rest falls into place. Open
| Source code can just be recompiled, there is a lot less
| arch specific hackery going on these days (and if there
| is for ASM optimized hot paths, it's only compiled for
| that arch).
| messe wrote:
| _Loongson_ (the company) have been around since 2001.
|
| _Loongarch_ (the ISA that debian is now supporting) has only
| been around since 2021. Previously Loongson used MIPS and
| another ISA known as LoongISA.
| anonnon wrote:
| > Loongson used MIPS
|
| Stallman actually daily drove a Loongson MIPS-based notebook
| for a while.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Well, that's what you get when you can do nation-state planning
| with an event horizon measured in decades, practically infinite
| cash and with the ruthlessness to engage in corporate espionage
| plus the total elimination of political campaigning (because
| you're the CCP, the only gang in town).
|
| In contrast, Western corporate execs have an event horizon
| between "next quarterly reports" and "vesting/bonus period",
| additionally in any sufficiently large organizations you will
| have fiefdom fights that are counterproductive to the company
| at large, and Western politicians can only think to "next
| important election", so basically a few months as well because
| there is _always_ an election going on in some state or local
| division.
|
| We have gotten _societally incompatible_ with not just coming
| up with new ideas, but with maintaining what we already have.
| It 's like in 1984 - we can't even think of such timeframes any
| more.
|
| And no, I'm not calling for a dictatorship. I'm rather calling
| for dissolution of the stock market for speculation, and for
| consolidating elections to once every four years so that
| politicians have time to cool down from the constant campaign
| hype pressure.
| messe wrote:
| > for consolidating elections to _once every four years_ so
| that politicians have time to cool down from the constant
| campaign hype pressure.
|
| You talk about "western" politicians, but this point feels
| like it only really applies to the US with its ridiculous
| two-year cycle.
| close04 wrote:
| A 4-years cycle is also nowhere near enough for any long
| term project. This is the cost of democracy where you have
| to give people short term wins in order to win an election.
|
| Infrastructure projects can take decades. The country's
| budget is a 0 sum game. Developing something expensive will
| lead to cuts or shortages somewhere else and those people
| suffering will make you pay in the next election because
| they won't care about the greater good from 20 years from
| now.
|
| Your opponents will exploit any perceived failure and use
| it against you. And they will equally take your victories
| and sell them as their own if your long term project
| happens to bear fruit on their term. So everyone focuses on
| what looks good inside a term of a few years to sell in the
| next election.
| whatshisface wrote:
| The most common long-term project worldwide is the
| raiding of the public chest. :-)
| gorgoiler wrote:
| And a general election process that lasts from January to
| November of every fourth year, and an executive hobbled
| until the January after that because, goodness knows why,
| you get to remain in power for weeks after someone else has
| taken the mandate to govern.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| > goodness knows why,
|
| It takes time for the horses to bring the electors to
| Washington.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > and an executive hobbled until the January after that
| because, goodness knows why, you get to remain in power
| for weeks after someone else has taken the mandate to
| govern.
|
| Heh in Germany we have taken our sweet time as well. 2017
| for example? That stretched into 2018, half a year [1].
|
| The key difference is, while the outgoing executive holds
| their position until the new government coalition is
| formed, there is a strong tradition in a) the outgoing
| government to not abuse their positions to force their
| successors' hands, b) for everyone (including the far-
| left, excluding the far-right) to cooperate with each
| other to keep the country running and c) for cooperation
| across the aisles in general, even when there is a stable
| government. And there is no problem when the
| government/parliament cannot pass a budget either.
| Governmental authorities and public services keep on
| running assuming the last year's budget.
|
| [1] https://www.mehr-
| demokratie.de/nachrichten/einzelansicht/die...
| mschuster91 wrote:
| > You talk about "western" politicians, but this point
| feels like it only really applies to the US with its
| ridiculous two-year cycle.
|
| I'm German, it's even worse here because we have 16 states
| plus the EU elections and that means you have about three
| to five distinct elections in any given year. And with the
| exception of the small states no one gives a fuck about
| (sorry Saarland), each and every single of the state
| elections is seen as a sign for federal politics.
| im3w1l wrote:
| > In contrast, Western corporate execs have an event horizon
| between "next quarterly reports" and "vesting/bonus period",
|
| The big tech companies ran without profit for a long time.
| People worried a lot about that but they did it anyway.
| rangestransform wrote:
| High interest rates in general are a strong deterrent from
| investing with that kind of time horizon. The risk free
| rate of return has skyrocketed, and investors no longer
| have to turn to risky gambles to make a return. The same
| thing happened in Canada when housing was propped up by the
| government in '08, leading to real estate sucking all of
| the money out of the economy. The US is in this position
| now because of how allergic all politicians have become to
| using taxes for the purpose of cooling down the economy.
| The only feasible campaigns are full inflationary spending,
| all the time, and the only difference is who the money goes
| to. The stupid electorate who vote for candy for dinner
| instead of eating vegetables are equally to blame.
| wkat4242 wrote:
| Hasn't RISC-V kinda taken its place by now?
| DeathArrow wrote:
| Are there RISC-V chips with comparable performance for desktops
| and laptops on the market?
| wkat4242 wrote:
| I thought so, yes: https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/05/chi
| na_alibaba_risc_v_...
|
| Not sure how they compare exactly. And of course it never
| hurts to have two players in the game.
|
| I just meant I've heard a lot more about stuff going on in
| the RISC-V field in China. A lot of it is focused on the
| embedded stuff yes but not only there.
| fweimer wrote:
| Are C930 CPUs actually available?
|
| For the Loongson 3A6000, there is an independent
| performance review:
| https://chipsandcheese.com/p/loongson-3a6000-a-star-among-
| ch...
|
| I couldn't find something comparable for C930 CPUs.
| yegle wrote:
| That's a long way and congrats to the Longson team!
|
| My college friend participated in the Google Summer of Code 2009,
| migrating openSUSE to MIPS. The CPU they used was an earlier
| version of Longson (forgot which one).
| wofo wrote:
| You surely meant to write "a loong way", right?
| kqr2 wrote:
| Didn't Richard Stallman use a Lemote Loongson computer before?
|
| https://stallman.org/stallman-computing.html
| rixed wrote:
| Yes, and that machine was exceptionally good; by far the best
| laptop i ever owned: mate screen, good keyboard, small and
| lightweight for the time, and exceptionally open and well
| supported for Linux despite being a mips arch. I would gladly
| get myself another one if I could.
| yanhangyhy wrote:
| comes a long way.. they have some pc models sell in china but i
| guess only IT dev people would give it a try. china is pushing
| the state-owned companies and civil servant to use linux (some
| linux distro build by china company and replace windows and all
| America product) and the china-build CPU, but LooongArch also
| seems is not the #1 choice. I hope they can chooose LoongArch and
| built some debian based OS to use. This would be a 100 millon
| user market..
|
| Also seems russia is interested to do some stuff based on
| LoongArch
|
| just found one on JD: 14inch, LoongArch 3A6000, 16G mem, 512G
| storage, 4G GPU storage, sold for 6499RMB around 920USD
| DeathArrow wrote:
| I think the process is very far behind the 3nm used by Intel
| and ARM SOC makers, so performance per watt will take a hit.
| drumhead wrote:
| Are Loongson powered machines available in the west? Are they
| only available from Chinese manufacturers?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| You can just buy them off AliExpress, I've got myself a 3A6000
| board from there - it's an interesting machine, feels much like
| a (UEFI) PC and is sure faster than any readily available ARM
| SBC, about the level of Zen1 I'd say.
| jambutters wrote:
| Interesting, I thought performance was lower than zen 1. I
| wonder if they'll ever catch up
| INTPenis wrote:
| I briefly owned one of the first Loongson netbook laptops, the
| Lemote I believe it was nicknamed. I've always been very much
| into open hardware, so I picked one up as soon as I could.
|
| And I believe Debian was the only distro I was able to run on it
| back then too. Also NetBSD.
|
| I ended up giving it to someone at the local hacker space. It's
| fun to try but it's not a daily driver.
|
| Didn't Stallman use one as daily driver for a while?
| pantalaimon wrote:
| Actually Alpine had support for LoongArch64 well before Debian
| - I have it running on my machine. Works fine expect for
| support for the integrated GPU.
|
| https://www.alpinelinux.org/posts/Alpine-3.21.0-released.htm...
| infinet wrote:
| Once I used an old MIPS debian in qemu to test big endian. I
| thought since LoongArch has its root in MIPS it may be big
| endian. It turns out "LoongArch bit designations are always
| little-endian".
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Huh. Is this arch supported by LLVM/Rust?
|
| It was announced recently (https://lwn.net/Articles/1044496/)
| that Apt, the Debian package manager, would require Rust by May
| 2026.
|
| It does look like LoongArch is a supported target of Rust at Tier
| 2: https://doc.rust-lang.org/beta/rustc/platform-
| support/loonga...
|
| In fact, Rust's targets page is much bigger than I remembered!
| Good work
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