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

This is the initial alpha release based on CentOS Linux 7 1503 ( Rebuilt from Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.1 sources ), with architecture and modifications patching as necessary. Because this hardware is very new and support for it is still evolving, there is no expectation for kernel ABI compatibility. Additionally, until the alpha period ends both the OS repository and the Updates repository are subject to change.

This release was built on an X-Gene system from Applied Micro. We are working to test against other platforms to ensure broad compatibility.

======== Download

You can find the install tree and repositories at http://buildlogs.centos.org/centos/7/os/aarch64/

While the build is in alpha, we are not releasing full isos as you would traditionally find with the x86_64 builds. Please use the boot.iso which has been pre-configured for a network install, or pxe from a locally hosted mirror of the installation tree.

We plan to make disk images available soon to help vendors bootstrap their platforms.

============ Installation

Installation guides and documentation will be provided via the CentOS wiki, at http://wiki.centos.org/SpecialInterestGroup/AltArch/AArch64 Because several packages are not yet available, the group information has been reduced and the only available installation option is 'minimal'. If you perform kickstart based installs, please note the only available group is currently 'Core'. We will improve upon this throughout the alpha process.

============ 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 lose 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.

In the next few days, we'll be adding a branch to git for modified packages so that patches are available to the community, as well as providing a repository for the debug-info packages.

================================== Coming Soon // Future Improvements

* Rebase to 4.1rc kernel * Improve package and group availability * Add additional hardware support * Disk images to support install via dd