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@centos.org) or K Singh ( kbsingh@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.