Linaro, a nonprofit organization that aims to accelerate embedded Linux development for the ARM architecture, has announced its first software release. Version 10.11 of the group's software stack quietly debuted this week. The group appears to be attracting interest and making steady progress.

Founded earlier this year by a coalition of ARM technology vendors, Linaro is not quite like other mobile Linux consortia. Rather than producing its own platform, the group wisely decided to focus on upstream work that will benefit existing mobile middleware projects. LInaro's efforts so far have primarily revolved around hardware enablement in the kernel and improving development tools. The group's work will eventually reduce the time that it takes for companies to bring ARM-powered products to market with Linux.

The 10.11 release supports several hardware environments, including the Beagle Board and ARM Versatile Express boards. It also comes in several different flavors tailored for different kinds of devices. The 10.11 system images are available for download from the Linaro website. The group is also publishing the code of its ARM-related improvements to the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC). Its branch of GCC 4.4 is available from Launchpad. Linaro hopes to merge its improvements back into the GCC mainline where possible.

Linaro's team of developers has grown to 70, many of which are on loan from sponsoring companies. It is still ramping up the workforce and hopes to reach its target of 100 developers in the near future. Linaro is also expanding its goals for the next release and forming new workgroups that will focus on areas like power management and graphics technology.Hardware support is also expected to grow in the next release as they add compatibility for additional development boards.

The Linaro project's emphasis on upstream development seems to be making an impression on the broader Linux community. Linux Foundation executive director Jim Zemlin is among those endorsing Linaro's work.

"The Linux Foundation welcomes the increase in upstream investment that Linaro has made on behalf of the ARM community," Zemlin said in a statement. "The collaborative engineering work Linaro is doing in the Linux kernel will help accelerate innovation in open source."

For additional details, you can refer to the official release announcement. ARM Linux enthusiasts who want to participate in the project can find more information at the Linaro wiki.