Modern Linux on SGI Altix

Published: 22-May-2025 - Last Updated: 3-Jun-2026

I recently purchased two SGI Altixes, an Altix 350 and Altix 3700. The IA64 Altix computers came with a RHEL based distro, then switched to SuSE Enterprise Linux Server (SLES). The latest officially supported is SLES 11, which I installed fine on both atlixes.
SLES works okay, but I've found that using it is difficult as there don't seem to be any archives of packages for it avaliable.

These are outdated. View the new instructions here: https://nsafran.com/blog/010-sn2-t2-install.html

I know others have gotten Debian to install on the Altix, but I was looking for a more modern OS. I first attempted to install Gentoo, which did work, but since Gentoo removed IA 64 support, I dont think its worth documenting this process. My rough notes are here: Getting circa 2022 Gentoo IA64 on an SGI Altix 350

T2 SDE Linux

I was pointed at T2 SDE Linux, which is a source based distro that supports IA64, by one of the devs working on out of branch Linux kernel support for IA64.

I bootstrapped T2 from my Gentoo install, but I think it should be possible to do it from a SLED 11 install as well.

UNDER CONSTRUCTION: I will clean up these notes next time I install on the Altix 3700. I also need to figure out elilo on T2.

Very rough notes.