Today, April 6, 2016, Manjaro Linux ARM developer Josh Crowder reports on the work done so far towards a final release for the anticipated port of the Arch Linux-based operating system to embedded and IoT (Internet of Things) devices.

We introduced you guys to the Manjaro Linux ARM port a while ago when Mr. Crowder and his team of developers informed the community that they are planning on conquering the ARM ecosystem, and already presented Raspberry Pi 2 builds for early adopters to try out.

And today, he wants to give us a quick status update on the Manjaro ARM port, because it has been exactly two months since we last heard about the upcoming project. According to Mr. Crowder, things are looking great right now and the port is moving forward, with the Manjaro Linux ARM 16.04 release coming soon.

"Just wanted to give an update of the status of Manjaro-Arm. With Boxit not working the way we had hoped and a little downtime for me to handle some personal matters, we are back up and moving forward," the developer has explained. "The next major tasks at hand is porting over some of manjaro-tools."

The Manjaro ARM packages can now be used with Arch Linux ARM's ones

While not the best solution out there, it looks like the Manjaro ARM developers have managed to create some quick scripts that will make it possible for the port's packages to be used with the ones from the Arch Linux ARM project. But a proper tool might be released soon to ease their work.

In the meantime, they are planning on porting various in-house built tools from the upstream Manjaro project, in particular the mkchrootpkg utility, and thanks to the new repo management tools and mirror structure, they managed to release new base tarballs for each of the Manjaro Linux ARM editions.