After what the developers call "11 months of grueling work", the very first release candidate for the ARM version of openSUSE is now available. The release is based on the current openSUSE 12.2 and supports ARM7-type hardware. This includes Texas Instrument's OMAP3 and OMAP4 Systems-on-a-Chip (SoC), Marvell's ArmadaXP 510 and Freescale i.MX51 processors.

The developers point out that after being relatively late to the game and first discussing an ARM port in September 2011, the distribution's ARM team had to bring the distribution up "from nowhere" in a relatively short amount of time. As part of this effort, they decided to concentrate on a subset of ARM devices so that they did not prolong the release's development time even further. As a result, not all ARM7 devices are supported. However, the currently supported hardware does include the popular BeagleBoard and PandaBoard devices.

More details concerning the hardware support for openSUSE 12.2 for ARM are available from the openSUSE wiki; installation instructions are also provided. Images of openSUSE 12.2 RC1 targeted at the different SoCs and generic images, both featuring an Xfce desktop and without a graphic user interface (a "JeOS"), can be downloaded from the project's servers.

(fab)