[Arm-dev] CentOS-7 beta candidate for AArch64 platforms

[Jim Perrin]

We are pleased to announce the public beta release of CentOS Linux 7 for
AArch64 compatible hardware.

We've addressed a number of issues discovered from the previous 2 weeks
of alpha testing, and feel that the release is stable enough to
transition to beta.


Improvements from Alpha
=======================

Improved package selection: A number of additional packages have been
added, including libreoffice, evolution, abrt, and more.

Updated kernel: Some non-fatal kernel errors have been address by moving
to a 4.1rc based kernel version. This also adds ACPI functionality to
the platform.

Improved Group selection: The installer now offers a larger group
selection from the previous minimal-only install.


Installation
============
Installation guides and documentation will be provided via the CentOS
wiki, at http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/AArch64


Download
========
The full (unsigned) install tree is available at
http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/aarch64/


============
Contributing

The AArch64 effort is meant to be a community effort as part of the
AltArch SIG (http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch), and
we welcome enthusiasts and vendors to contribute patches, fixes,
documentation, etc. In the AArch64 Extras repository, we have provided
the mock package and dependencies so that community members can more
easily contribute, as well as testing their own builds locally. Please
submit patches, fixes, etc to the Arm-Dev list
(http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/arm-dev) for discussion and
acceptance.

We encourage vendors to come and join this effort, we have a loose
organization focused on the alternative architectures build process and
welcome interaction at the group level. Please get in touch with me
(jperrin at centos.org)  or K Singh ( kbsingh at centos.org ) to find out more
details.

The wider CentOS Ecosystem is also welcome to engage with us, both at
the project and code level. If you are working with a project that
interfaces, manages or develops on top of CentOS, specially in the
virtualization, cloud, container and infrastructure management areas -
we would love to have you guys get involved. While we don't have a lot
of resources, we are working with a few vendors to build up a community
resource pool that we would encourage other projects to share their
development, testing and delivery around CentOS Linux for aarch64.


-- 
Jim Perrin
The CentOS Project | http://www.centos.org
twitter: @BitIntegrity | GPG Key: FA09AD77