Alpha Core

Alpha Core 3 is now available, based on Fedora Core 5, with some modifications. See the download page for links. Mirrors will be added as they become available.

This release will only boot on SRM console machines, MILO support is not available. Continue reading below for the full release notes.

... interesting news.

Alpha Core has been quiet lately, but it's not for lack of activity behind the scenes. We have something important to announce; there will not be an Alpha Core 4.

Don't start crying yet, though.

Instead of Alpha Core 4, we hope that in a few months you'll join us in celebrating the release of Fedora 8 for Alpha. It's been a long time coming, and a lot of work has gone into the project, but it looks like the Alpha platform will be synchronised up with the mainstream releases of Fedora for the first time.

You can read more about what's going on with the Fedora Secondary Architectures proposal here, and we'll post more updates as they come in.

We could really use package builders and testers, and if you'd like to get on board and help out in any way, please get in touch with us, because the more people involved, the better.

In an attempt to decrease our reliance on these frequently spammer-targeted forums, I've set up a Wiki for the Alpha and/or Alpha Core.

There's absolutely nothing there yet, but I'd like to encourage anyone and everyone who knows of something useful that's in these forums to just paste it in to the Wiki somewhere.

Don't stress over formatting or "proper" presentation. We can figure that out later. For now, I think the important thing is to start getting some of the really good information about the Alpha that we've got into some well-defined and searchable place.

No, this isn't a new release, or a dodgy sequel. Just a note that the 2.0 release ISOs are being re-seeded, so there's a new BitTorrent link on the download page.

Thanks to Jeff Garzik for noticing the issue and sorting something out. The 1.0 and even the 0.9 releases are also on his mirror, if you're the curious and experimental type.

Alpha Core 2 is now available, based on Fedora Core 4. See the download page for links. Mirrors will be added as they become available.

This release is expected to boot on most modern Alpha systems.

MD5SUM list:
b9739b349941b558c06814b5b2e5318b ac2-disk1.iso
b078896e1862ba211364e6286aa6ee26 ac2-disk2.iso
e58d2c4956e7c46aaec664a2fe04a5e2 ac2-disk3.iso
f6c6946e095c238c7242d36adba59d06 ac2-disk4.iso

A new boot ISO image is available, to test compatibility for the upcoming 2.0 release. If you have any Alphas around, and a little time to spare, please download the image and try it out.

Please note that there are no packages on this disc - it is simply to test the boot kernel. Booting into "rescue" mode is sufficient.

Submit success or failure reports to the forums. Thanks!

This is bordering on "old news", but since a fair few people come by here as a result of searches, it'd be best noted.

Note to self: moving to a new house and maintaining a web site is a tricky thing to balance.

A beta port of CentOS 4.1 for the Alpha is now available. CentOS is a community built and maintained distribution based on Red Hat's Enterprise Linux distribution. It's much less of a moving target than Fedora Core, and may well be a good option for those of you wanting to run a more stable server system.

The Alpha is looking less like a second-class citizen every day. Good work, folks.

An informative article on the history of the Alpha was recently mentioned on the NetBSD Alpha mailing list (and passed on to others). Worth a read.

In the interests of bumping up the "useful information" quotient of this site, I've started building a list of links to other operating systems for the Alpha.

Suggestions to this thread in the forums, please.

While all my Alphas are still in storage, I'm going to try making myself useful by maintaining a somewhat definitive compatibility list.

If you've had a success or a failure installing on a particular variant of an Alpha system, please make a post in the forum detailing how it went.

This will eventually lead to machine-specific pages on the site, and possibly the beginnings of an FAQ.

The discussion forum is now open. It's very minimal, but should be a decent enough place for anyone to get some questions answered.

Another good option is Red Hat's Alpha mailing list. All the developers hang out there, and many other good people too. It's worth joining up.

While the release of 1.0 has some people's attention, I'd like to get in a little plug for a site I'm trying to get started out. Practical Unix is an idea that's been kicking around in my head for a while (since 2001, according the the domain registration date) and it's now time to send it off into the world and see what happens.

I'd appreciate anyone dropping by with either questions or answers. It won't get anywhere without people. Thanks!

ISO images for Alpha Core version 1.0 are now available. See the download page for links.

MD5SUM list:
073e9c4f1173bfefb9b2c21a34dbde96 svetlana-disk1.iso
5e7082d364f850706c281ec9ee17077b svetlana-disk2.iso
50161c70f12fff7ca084f1d043242dd4 svetlana-disk3.iso
d8b755a1330dfd77bb8e962595076bbe svetlana-disk4.iso