diff --git a/AUTHORS b/AUTHORS
index 42b5c6a9..3482e94f 100644
--- a/AUTHORS
+++ b/AUTHORS
@@ -139,6 +139,9 @@ Roman Bogorodskiy <novel at clublife dot ru>
 Szymon Boniecki
   Reads current LC_TIME
 
+Thomas Cort
+  CPU frequency patch for alpha
+
 Toni <bleach at users dot sourceforge dot net>
   exec*/tail/head output evalution
 
diff --git a/ChangeLog b/ChangeLog
index 148efd57..55c8b8b2 100644
--- a/ChangeLog
+++ b/ChangeLog
@@ -1,5 +1,9 @@
 # $Id$
 
+2006-03-05
+	* Added patch to make $cpu stuff work on alpha (thanks Thomas Cort)
+	http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=122637#c3
+
 2006-02-14
 	* Drastically simplified own_window=yes window creation code.
 	* on_bottom and wm_class_name deprecated (they do nothing)
diff --git a/src/linux.c b/src/linux.c
index cc54dcd4..d234da98 100644
--- a/src/linux.c
+++ b/src/linux.c
@@ -860,12 +860,22 @@ void get_freq( char * p_client_buffer, size_t client_buffer_size, char * p_forma
 	while (fgets(s, sizeof(s), f) != NULL){		//read the file
 #if defined(__i386) || defined(__x86_64)
 		if (strncmp(s, "cpu MHz", 7) == 0) {	//and search for the cpu mhz
+#else
+#if defined(__alpha)
+		if (strncmp(s, "cycle frequency [Hz]", 20) == 0) {		// different on alpha
 #else
 		if (strncmp(s, "clock", 5) == 0) {	// this is different on ppc for some reason
-#endif
+#endif // defined(__alpha)
+#endif // defined(__i386) || defined(__x86_64)
+
 		strcpy(frequency, strchr(s, ':') + 2);	//copy just the number
+#if defined(__alpha)
+		frequency[strlen(frequency) - 6] = '\0';// strip " est.\n"
+		freq = strtod(frequency, NULL)/1000000; // kernel reports in Hz 
+#else
 		frequency[strlen(frequency) - 1] = '\0'; // strip \n
 		freq = strtod(frequency, NULL);
+#endif
 		break;
 		}
 	}