It's based on the sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3

Jan 5, 2017 01:10 GMT  ·  By

CentOS developer Jim Perrin reports on January 4, 2017, on the release and general availability of the CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) operating system for AArch64/ARM64 machines.

CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) is based on the freely distributed sources of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.3. Coming three weeks after Karanbir Singh's announcement of CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) on x86_64 (64-bit) hardware, as well as Fabian Arrotin's release for the CentOS userland 7.3 (1611) on ARMhf platforms, the latest version of the server-oriented operating system can now be used on AArch64 (ARM64) machines, too.

"I am pleased to announce the general availability of CentOS Linux 7 (1611) for AArch64/ARM64 machines. The kernel has been rebased from 4.2.0 to 4.5.0, and includes several patches recently merged into the upstream," said Jim Perrin in the mailing list announcement. "The kernel patches and modifications can be found at https://git.centos.org/summary/sig-altarch!kernel.git in the sig-altarch7-aarch64 branch."

Some known issues you should be aware of

Before getting all excited, take a moment and read the known issues for this release of CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) on ARM64 hardware architectures. For starters, if you're deploying the operating system on Mustang-based boards, you should know that they must have the latest firmware version installed or there won't be proper network support when the Linux 4.5.0-19 or later kernels are used.

To take full advantage of recent kernel improvements shipped with CentOS 7.3 (1611), if you're deploying the OS on Merlin-based boards, the most recent firmware version needs to be available. The same goes for ThunderX-based boards, which also need to sport the latest firmware version for MAC address consistency. Download CentOS Linux 7.3 (1611) for ARM64 architectures right now!