If you look at http://wiki.debian.org/ArmEabiHowto you will find the instructions to install the armel (ARM EABI) port of the Debian Gnu/Linux distribution.

Unfortunately, following that HowTo, after the installation process, when you first try to boot the system you get a Kernel Panic, since linux isn't able to find the root filesystem (probably, because there is no ext2 support built into the kernel and no initial ram disk is provided).

In order to solve this problem, I've modified the initrd that is used in this other HowTo, updating it with a new kernel (the same used in the first howto) and with this initrd I managed to get the system working.

I'm uploading in this page the files I've used to complete the installation, hoping someone will find them useful.

PS: in order to have the network interface of the guest OS correctly working, remember that it can be seen as eth2, and that the following parameters must be passed to qemu: "-net nic -net user".
This interface isn't automatically configured at the system startup. If you want it to be automatically enabled, put the following lines in /etc/network/interfaces in the guest os:

allow-hotplug eth2
iface eth2 inet dhcp

The kernel image and the ramdisks are based upon the linux kernel version 2.6.26-1.