Not too long ago, I was involved in a project which required that I get Linux (plus window manager) running on an Atmel AVR32 development board. We needed to be able to develop software for the AVR32 environment on a computer running Linux and X-Windows.
Basically, we were able to set up a PC running Ubuntu 7.10 Linux, install the tools provided by Atmel which includes a cross-compiler, build the necessary pieces for the AVR32 board and then build an operating system image for an MMC card which would then boot on the AVR32 development hardware.
The above description of the steps is over simplified and it was kind of a pain to get going since there was no real documentation. Just a lot of reading the forums at AVR Freaks
Below are pictures of sample software running on Ubuntu Linux and the AVR32 development board.
