Loong64 Becomes Official Debian Architecture: A Milestone for Chinese Processor Technology

Loong64 Becomes Official Debian Architecture: A Milestone for Chinese Processor Technology

**In December, 2025–**In a significant development for the global open-source community, the LoongArch instruction set architecture (loong64) has been officially recognized as a supported architecture by Debian, one of the world’s most influential Linux distributions.

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A Major Step Forward

John Paul Adrian Glaubitz, a physicist at the Free University of Berlin and prominent Linux kernel developer, announced the news in an email to the Debian development mailing list. “I am happy to announce that a little more than two years after the initial bootstrap in Debian Ports, loong64 has become an official architecture in Debian and will therefore be part of the upcoming Debian 14 (‘forky’) release if everything goes as planned,” he wrote.

The announcement marks a crucial milestone in the integration of Chinese processor technology into mainstream global computing ecosystems. Debian serves as the foundation for numerous popular Linux distributions, including Ubuntu, Linux Mint, and Kali Linux, making it arguably the world’s most widely-used Linux distribution family. Its reputation for stability and security has also made it a cornerstone of server infrastructure worldwide.

Loong64 Becomes Official Debian Architecture: A Milestone for Chinese Processor Technology

Technical Progress

According to Glaubitz’s announcement, the loong64 architecture has made rapid progress. An initial set of 112 packages was manually built and imported with assistance from the Debian Ports packaging team. This effort established the initial chroot and initiated the first build cycle. In just one night, a single build instance successfully compiled and uploaded 300 new packages.

The initial bootstrap phase is expected to take approximately one week, with the possibility of additional build instances being added to increase throughput. This means that by 2027 at the latest, users will have access to a fully-packaged Debian operating system for LoongArch processors.

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Breaking Western Monopolies

The inclusion of loong64 in Debian represents more than just technical achievement—it carries significant geopolitical implications. For decades, the global computing ecosystem has been dominated by Western-developed architectures, primarily x86/AMD64 and ARM. The official recognition of LoongArch by Debian positions Chinese processor technology as a viable alternative and potentially a major player in the global information processing ecosystem.

Adrian, who has been championing LoongArch’s integration into the Debian ecosystem since 2023, has played a pivotal role in this achievement. His efforts reflect the collaborative nature of open-source development, where technical merit transcends national boundaries.

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Industry Recognition

The global technology community has taken notice of this development.

It’s FOSS, a respected digital media outlet covering Linux and open-source software, praised the significance of Debian 14’s loong64 support.

The publication noted that LoongArch provides a viable alternative outside the established ecosystems controlled by Western capital and technology, enriching the hardware diversity of the open-source software ecosystem.

This is particularly important for countries and regions seeking technological independence.

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Looking Ahead

With official Debian support, LoongArch-based development boards and desktop systems could become as accessible and user-friendly as popular platforms like Raspberry Pi. The high stability, ease of use, and global support ecosystem that Debian provides will be available to users of Chinese-designed processors.

This milestone represents years of development work and international collaboration. As the bootstrap process continues and Debian 14 approaches release, the loong64 architecture is poised to demonstrate that open-source principles can bridge technological and geopolitical divides, creating a more diverse and resilient global computing ecosystem.

The success of loong64’s integration into Debian may well inspire other regional processor architectures to seek similar recognition, further diversifying the global technology landscape in the years to come.

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