The MIPS port is actually two ports, debian-mips and debian-mipsel. They differ in the endianness of the binaries. MIPS CPUs are able to run at both endiannesses, but since that's normally not changeable in software, we need to have both architectures. SGI machines run in big-endian mode (debian-mips) while Digital DECstations and Cobalt Qube/RaQ run in little-endian, mode (debian-mipsel). Some boards, such as Broadcom's BCM91250A evaluation board (aka SWARM) can run in both modes, selectable by a switch on the board.
Debian GNU/Linux 4.0 (etch) supports the following machines:
Please see the release notes and installation manual for more information.
casals.debian.org (mips) and vaughan.debian.org (mipsel) are available to Debian developers for porting work. Please see the machine database for more information about these machines. In general, you will be able to use the three chroot environments: stable (etch), testing (lenny) and unstable (sid). You can use the dchroot program to access them. For any inquiries mail <debian-admin@lists.debian.org>. Accounts on other machines are available on request by contacting Thiemo Seufer <ths@networkno.de> (Broadcom machines) or LIU Qi <liuqi82@gmail.com> (Lemote machines).
This is a list of people who are working on the MIPS port:
There are a couple of mailing lists dealing with Linux/MIPS and especially Debian on MIPS.