Browsing Occitan (post 1500) translation

3.

If you have any other operating systems on your system that you wish to keep (dual boot setup), you should make sure that they have been properly shut down <emphasis>before</emphasis> you boot the installer. Installing an operating system while another operating system is in hibernation (has been suspended to disk) could result in loss of, or damage to the state of the suspended operating system which could cause problems when it is rebooted.

4.

For information on how to boot the graphical installer, see <xref linkend="graphical"/>.

5.

Alpha Console Firmware

6.

Console firmware is stored in a flash ROM and started when an Alpha system is powered up or reset. There are two different console specifications used on Alpha systems, and hence two classes of console firmware available:

7.

<emphasis>SRM console</emphasis>, based on the Alpha Console Subsystem specification, which provides an operating environment for OpenVMS, Tru64 UNIX, and Linux operating systems.

8.

<emphasis>ARC, AlphaBIOS, or ARCSBIOS console</emphasis>, based on the Advanced RISC Computing (ARC) specification, which provides an operating environment for Windows NT.

9.

From the user's perspective, the most important difference between SRM and ARC is that the choice of console constrains the possible disk-partitioning scheme for the hard disk which you wish to boot off of.

10.

ARC requires that you use an MS-DOS partition table (as created by <command>cfdisk</command>) for the boot disk. Therefore MS-DOS partition tables are the <quote>native</quote> partition format when booting from ARC. In fact, since AlphaBIOS contains a disk partitioning utility, you may prefer to partition your disks from the firmware menus before installing Linux.

11.

Conversely, SRM is <emphasis>incompatible</emphasis><footnote> <para> Specifically, the bootsector format required by the Console Subsystem Specification conflicts with the placement of the DOS partition table. </para> </footnote> with MS-DOS partition tables. Since Tru64 Unix uses the BSD disklabel format, this is the <quote>native</quote> partition format for SRM installations.

12.

GNU/Linux is the only operating system on Alpha that can be booted from both console types, but &debian; &release; only supports booting on SRM-based systems. If you have an Alpha for which no version of SRM is available, if you will be dual-booting the system with Windows NT, or if your boot device requires ARC console support for BIOS initialization, you will not be able to use the &debian; &release; installer. You can still run &debian; &release; on such systems by using other install media; for instance, you can install Debian woody with MILO and upgrade.