Armbian has been released!

#1

Armbian 22.05

Highlights:

  • Thousands of hours have been invested to stabilize supported board images

  • Hundreds of Linux kernel and user space related bug fixes completed by the Armbian team

  • Added support for new boards

  • Established new Maintainers

What’s New:

Our first priority is to support and enhance the Community. To that goal, Armbian releases updates and bug fixes from our Contributors on a regular basis. We are excited to add support for the following new boards:

  • DevTerm A06

  • Orange Pi R1+ LTS

  • Radxa Rock 3A

  • Radxa Zero

And to announce new Maintainers and movement to supported status the following boards:

  • ESPRESSObin

  • Radxa Rock Pi 4

A complete list of bug fixes and updates are linked below.

Community Call to Action:

As an Armbian Community member or user you know that we support many different single board computers, with each release requiring a significant investment of time, effort and money. While most Linux distributions can create a single build and then release their distribution, we must test our releases against many different hardware platforms which is much more time consuming and makes providing consistent stable images more challenging. We are able to develop new and updated releases due to the significant contribution of time from our Maintainers, developers and limited donations.

At present our funding and Community time contributions allows us to complete one medium sized project per year related to our tools such as the Build Framework or our configuration tool along with bug fixes, support for new boards, etc. Clearly this level of support, while appreciated, does not allow us to complete many of the outstanding issues or improvements needed or requested by the Community. Accordingly, we believe we are at an inflection point, where in order to move forward and address the Community’s needs, Armbian needs to transition to a new business model. One where growth will require us to acquire additional funding before we can address many of the larger issues.

How can you help?

Time: For those who want to contribute time, please consider becoming a board Maintainer of one of the many boards that Armbian supports.

Money: For those who can help monetarily, please consider making a donation.

Credits:

This release represents the hard work of exceptional individuals who have contributed their time and expertise. Many thanks to (in alphabetical order):

150balbes, adeepn, AmadeusGhost, amazingfate, belegdol, catalinii, chbgdn, DJAlPee, EvilOlaf, heisath, hzyitc, iav, igorpecovnik, julianwhitehm, lanefu, littlecxm, Myron-S, ManoftheSea, neheb, NicoD, paolosabatino, peter279k, piter75, psztoch, RadxaYuntian, RichNeese, rpardini, schwar3kat, The-going, Tonymac32, theblackhole, TRS-80, umiddelb, yang

To see the full release changelog, please visit: Release Changelog

The full release can be read: here

–

Hello All,

As Radxa boards make up a good amount of supported Armbian boards, our media team wanted to get an update out to the Radxa Community. If this is the wrong place for this announcement someone on the moderation team please reach out and we can find a better place for it. Otherwise, we will continue to update you here in this thread as new releases are put out.

Have a great day!

1 Like
#2

Hi there,

I’m glad that you are improving the software. I love the hardware, but it lacks good software support…

Today I flashed the three packages just released a week ago, but with no luck, so you need to improve the software still more if you want to have a nice user base:

-Image for radxa-zero-debian-buster-xfce4-arm64-20220602-0403-mbr.img.xz: No Wifi service in the panel, after verifying with “mncli dev wifi” that all SSIDs were scanned correctly, I tried to connect manually using "nmcli dev wifi connect… " but I’ve got this error:

Error: Connection activation failed: (5) IP configuration could not be reserved (no available address, timeout, etc.).

I tried to run “mncli monitor” but there is no output and I had to cancel the process.

About the other two images that I tested:
- Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Radxa-zero_bullseye_current_5.10.119_minimal.img.xz: **No desktop.**  Useless.
- Armbian_22.08.0-trunk_Radxa-zero_focal_current_5.10.119_xfce_desktop.img.xz : **Worked but can't start GPARTED after installing it.  Useless.**
#3

Dear Radxa Community,

We are excited to announce that our new release is approaching quickly, with an estimated release date of May 25th . Our team is working actively on the final touches, focusing on stability and fine-tuning advanced features such as 3D and video acceleration. We’re utilizing the best available methods, as there are multiple options to consider.

We are adjusting our build targets to include stable, rolling and application-specific builds.

  • Stable Releases : For those who prefer a more reliable and tested environment.
  • Rolling Releases : For the latest updates and experimental features.
  • Applications : Optimized builds for specific applications.

We will continue to support Jammy (old stable Ubuntu) while gradually introducing Noble as the latter has numerous bugs from upstream user space applications.

Official Partnership with Radxa:

We are thrilled to announce a new official partnership with Radxa. This collaboration will enhance support for their newly released RK3588 boards, bringing more robust and reliable options to our users.

Community Engagement and Giveaways:

One of our current giveaways is nearing its end, but don’t worry – a new one is here! Stay tuned for more exciting opportunities.

Focus Areas:

As we approach the release date, we ask for your help, especially in the areas of desktop acceleration and desktop environments. While we have covered base OS system features well, your contributions and feedback are invaluable.

Community Poll Results:

We recently conducted a poll to understand our community’s involvement in open-source projects. Here are the results:

  • I’m an active contributor : 28.6%
  • Contributed occasionally : 31.7%
  • Not yet, but I’d like to : 28.6%
  • No, why? : 11.1%

These results are based on 63 votes and show a vibrant and engaged community, with a significant number of active and occasional contributors. For those who haven’t contributed yet but would like to, we encourage you to get involved. Your participation can make a significant difference!

Thank you for your continued support and contributions. Together, we can make Armbian even better!

Best regards,

The Armbian Team

#4

Just a quick question:
Is the Armbian presence at fosstodon the official mastodon account?

I’m asking because the account isn’t verified at this moment.

#5

It is, but we were not aware of this functionality. Thank you for hint!

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1 Like
#6

Ah. Great. Releasing the worst software I’ve ever seen that’s maintained by an even worse community of narcissists. Yes I am bitter because you shouldn’t tell people you offer something and then degrade them if they mention problems or lack of features.

You people create an illusion of reliability and dependability and then just trash people who dare to complain about anything. The whole Armbian initiative should be dropped completely.

At least that’s how it’s been so far in my opinion.
To be fair - not everyone at Armbian is like that, but the forums are hell.

(sarcasm) Gosh, gotta love community endeavors…
Ban me for saying all that if you want, but keep this message visible.
Maybe someone somewhere will reflect on their attitude.

1 Like
#7

When you say “you people”, do you mean just the one person (who won’t be named), or multiple people you’ve encountered for support?

#8

Armbian 24.5.1 Havier

We’re excited to announce a new Armbian release: Armbian 24.5.1 Havier! This release focuses on stability and UX improvement, with an emphasis on stable builds and the hardwares we support the most. The changelog of this release is just massive!

Key highlights

Reproducible Armbian OS and Armbian build framework are tightly connected. Framework can build custom Debian or custom Ubuntu. Armbian Ubuntu is made from LTS or latest packages and is cleaned from all Canonical packaging including snapd. By default, we provide the latest critical packages also in the LTS package base. Armbian Jammy and Noble comes with highly optimized, specially built for each hardware platform, on top of mainline kernel 6.6.y or from SoC vendors, ZFS 2.2.4 and always the latest deb packaged Chromium, packed as .deb, comes with 3D and video acceleration where possible, VS Code, Thunderbird, Firefox, preinstalled Linux Userspace x86 and x86_64 Emulator on aarch64 hardware and several others. Armbian provides cleaned, improved, but stays close to the standard Debian and Ubuntu experience. To keep 100% compatibility, we tend to keep things that work well as they are. We stick to a minimalistic approach – less is more.

Excellent Hardware Support

Armbian excels in providing exceptional hardware support for single board computers. Our team maintains a large and diverse selection of hardware. We specialize in Rockchip flagship SoC RK3588, and Allwinner devices, we look forward to adding more Qualcomm devices. Our highly productive developer community integrates everything into the fast and user-friendly Armbian build framework (SDK).

Rolling builds

We are aware that many of you would like to run the latest code. For this reason, we provide daily rollercoaster aka rolling builds with Debian Testing / Trixie or Ubuntu Oracular, also with desktops which are under heavy development, such as KDE Plasma. We delayed releasing those in our stable channel as they are too immature.

Unofficial Images

In addition to platinum or standard support, where we usually have at least one person behind, Armbian provides many unofficial images for boards that are not fully tested and supported at https://github.com/armbian/community. Most of those images work just fine, but are untested.

If none of the ready-made images suits you, build your custom version of Armbian image. Perhaps you want to start your own Linux distribution? By using Armbian, this becomes very easy! We provide complete tooling.

Home Assistant and Other Tools

Do you want to speed up installation of your Home Assistant to almost any device that is out there? We provide ready to run images for many, but you can build your own in no time with the help of the build system and its extension framework. Which is in use to automatically build Home Assistant, OpenHab and Armbian Security (Trixie with Kali Linux tools). This provides a clean security oriented experience.

Recommendations for Production use

For production environments, we recommend:

  • hardware that has platinum or standard support label. For devices with these labels, we have people who are maintaining the code and we offer professional support.
  • using stabilized point releases around Armbian Linux 6.6.y and user space Jammy and Armbian Bookworm.
  • becoming Armbian Silver or Gold support partner to get access to professional services and help us pay common software support bills.

How Armbian cover the bill?

1% of software development, that comes without fun factor, is covered by the community donations. Any loss we are trying to mitigate with the help of partners. Sadly, a large part of the R&D bill still remains unpaid. We are mitigating this by dropping support on areas where loss is the biggest. If we do not receive enough volunteer help or funds from professional support, support degradation will become noticeable 6-12 months after we stop maintaining certain sections.

If you would like that we continue investing our precious time on the same level, perhaps on different levels, you need to step up and help.

Remarkable Contributors

We extend our heartfelt appreciation to the individuals who have contributed immensely to the growth and success of Armbian.

The Armbian superstars of this release

Support Staff: Didier, Lanefu, Adam, Werner, Aaron and many others have dedicated their expertise and time to provide support and guidance.

We also extend our gratitude to our esteemed partners. Your contributions and support are invaluable in shaping the Armbian community and its success.

Thank you for your continuous support to the Armbian community!

The Armbian team

1 Like
#9

Armbian 24.11 Stirk

We are thrilled to announce Armbian Release 24.11.1 , packed with significant updates across our entire ecosystem! These updates are aimed at enhancing functionality, expanding hardware support, and refining the user experience for both developers and everyday SBC users. Let’s dive into the exciting new features!

Core system updates:

Armbian Build Framework
The updated build system introduces new tools for faster builds and seamless integration. Optimized compilation workflows and prebuilt configurations make deploying custom firmware easier and more efficient, especially for developers focusing on specialized projects.

Armbian Config Utility
Armbian Config Next Generation has seen improvements in hardware control, streamlined service management, and automated configuration scripting, all designed to make system setup more efficient. Security patches and bug fixes further enhance reliability for device management.

Rockchip Linux Kernel
This kernel release brings major improvements to performance and compatibility for Rockchip-based single-board computers (SBCs). Key enhancements include better power management, enhanced GPU driver stability, and expanded support for advanced peripherals. Numerous bug fixes are also included, ensuring smoother and more reliable operations.

These updates are focused on improving performance, expanding hardware support, and refining tools for developers and SBC users alike. Visit the provided links for more comprehensive information on each update.

Significant Userspace Improvements

We are introducing significant advancements in the userspace with our refactored system configuration utility, armbian-config , rewritten from the ground up. This utility supports customization and automation of tasks in the Armbian environment, simplifying setup processes for various configurations and use cases. It helps users configure networks, manage SSH settings , adjust hardware features , and easily install or uninstall software packages . We have integrated unit testing and fast updates through GitHub, maximizing efficiency. We welcome your contributions!

Minimal OS

Armbian is available in both Debian and Ubuntu flavors. Each variant has its unique strengths, but we treat them both equally to ensure a consistent Armbian UX experience. We provide a smooth and straightforward Netplan assisted lightweight systemd-networkd or feature rich Network Manager based networking solution, ensuring consistent network configurations across different images. Migration between Armbian, Ubuntu, or Debian is seamless. Whether you need to set up an Access Point or simple or advanced networking , we’ve got you covered. For application installations, use armbian-config for a quicker setup or follow the standard installation path.

Notable Software Packages with Easy Installation

With a single command or through a menu-driven process, users can install popular software packages such as Docker , Portainer , Pi-Hole , OpenHab , and Kuma . The selection of available software titles is expanding rapidly through our system configuration tool. We designed this tool to allow new installation scripts to be added effortlessly, enabling community contributions. Comprehensive automation is in place to verify code from multiple perspectives, and unit tests for each function as well as automatic documentation generation are supported. Once a new feature is added, we regularly verify it for deployment and reliability.

Dedicated Application Images

To offer the best possible user experience and ensure compatibility, we provide dedicated images with pre-configured applications on top of a clean Armbian OS . These dedicated images contain only the essential components required to run specific applications, delivering optimal performance. For instance:

Home Assistant : We provide images with Home Assistant functionality on par with their official HAOS. This ensures users have the same level of integration and support as with HAOS, tailored for Armbian environments.

Security-oriented Armbian OS Images : For security-focused use cases, we also provide images that come with pre-installed security tools commonly found in Kali Linux . This gives users a ready-to-go solution for security-related projects.

OpenMediaVault : For storage enthusiasts, we offer pre-installed OpenMediaVault images to help set up personal or home NAS solutions quickly and efficiently.

These dedicated application images are optimized for their respective purposes and provide the essentials without the overhead of unnecessary components. This enables users to focus directly on their application goals without the hassle of configuration from scratch.

Desktop Images


While Armbian primarily focuses on minimal OS images for deployments, our desktop variants are designed to deliver streamlined desktop experiences on both x86 workstations and many small SBCs. We have narrowed our desktop environments to KDE Neon , Gnome , and XFCE . All three options are available for powerful hardware, while XFCE is the choice for low-powered, older devices. Each option comes with 3D acceleration if the SoC supports it, and Rockchip-based hardware also features 4K video playback out of the box .

Partnership Collaborations

We are collaborating with leading vendors of single-board computers (SBCs). Recently, in partnership with Radxa , we successfully deployed a low-power mirror server running Armbian, built around their ITX platform: Radxa Rock 5 ITX. We also provide platinum support for this hardware, as well as for Rock 5B+ and 5C models.

In collaboration with Khadas , we maintain Khadas Edge2 and several models from the VIM series. Additionally, we organized a giveaway of two powerful Mind workstations, limited to active contributors to the Armbian project. Open source maintainers sacrifice their time to ensure the smooth functioning of the code we all use, and we wanted to show our appreciation.

We also offer platinum support for the Allwinner-powered CB1, developed by the renowned 3D printer manufacturer Bigtreetech . In collaboration with BananaPi Tech , we provide advanced support for their computing module CM40 and the Rockchip RK3588-powered BananaPi M7. We are also developing for their RISC-V platform-based BananaPi F3.

Our renewed cooperation with FriendlyElec sees us maintaining several devices, such as the M6, T6, and R6x, all built around RK3588. Additionally, we offer advanced support for Mekotronics , Innovato , Libre Computer , Texas Instruments , JetHome , SmartNow , AlfredSmart , and others. Our contribution to the community is in providing OS images for all build targets. However, for boards that are not under active team supervision, while most of them function well, we cannot commit to resolving tickets related to unsupported models due to limited resources.

Remarkable Contributors

Our heartfelt gratitude goes out to individuals who have significantly contributed to the growth and success of Armbian:

AaronDewes, adeepn, aiamadeus, alex3d, alexl83, amazingfate, as-jackson, belegdol, benhoff, bmilde, brentr, btbxbob, buldo, chainsx, ColorfulRhino, davidandreoletti, dependabot, dimitry-ishenko, dust-7, efectn, EvilOlaf, fridtjof, ginkage, HeyMeco, hqnicolas, igorpecovnik, IsMrX, itlhd, JohnTheCoolingFan, jomadeto, Joshua-Riek, lpapadakos, mahdichi, mattx433, monkaBlyat, MrSuicideParrot, mr-toolcraft, mschirrmeister, paolosabatino, pyavitz, pykpkg47, RadxaNaoki, RadxaStephen, rpardini, rvalle, schmiedelm, schwar3kat, sicXnull, siis2992, SuperKali, Tearran, The-going, Tonymac32, viraniac, williammartin

We also thank our support staff: Didier, Lanefu, Adam, Werner, Aaron, and many more for their dedicated expertise in providing support and guidance.

We also extend our gratitude to our esteemed partners. Find out more about them here. Your contributions and support are invaluable in shaping the Armbian community and its success.

Thank you for your continuous support of the Armbian community!

The Armbian Team.

2 Likes
#10

Does 24.11 for Rock 5B use the panthor GPU driver?

#11

Of course. GPU support is best what is possible. YouTube 4K video playback, mentioned in the text, is not possible otherwise.

1 Like