Few days ago the release of the new version of the Linux distribution, «Armbian 21.05» was presented in which a large number of updates have been made, of which the inclusion of the Linux kernel 5.11 stands out, as well as the added support for more boards and much more.
For those unfamiliar with Armbian should know that is a Linux distribution that provides a compact system environment for a variety of single board computers based on ARM.
Debian 10 and Ubuntu 18.04 / 20.10 base packages are used for compilation training, but the environment is completely rebuilt using its own build system with the inclusion of optimizations to reduce size, increase performance, and apply additional protection mechanisms.
For example, the / var / log partition is mounted using zram and stored in RAM in compressed form with data downloaded to the drive once a day or at shutdown. The / tmp partition is mounted using tmpfs.
Currently the distribution is compatible with the following devices:
- Banana Pi
- Beelink X2
- clearfog base
- clearfog pro
- Cubieboard
- cubi truck
- Outer Dreamcatcher
- Cubox-i
- Lemaker Guitar
- Libre Computer Project AML-S905X-CC (Le Potato) [2]
- Free Computer Project ALL-H3-CC (Tritium) H2 + / H3 / H5
- Lamobo R1
- Olimex Lime
- Orange Pi
- MQmaker Miqi
- Friendlyarm Nano
- android
- Xunlong Orangepi
- LinkSprite Pcduino
- pine64so
- pinebook64
- Rock Pi 4
- rockpro64
- Roseapple pi
- Asus Tinkerboard
- udoo
- Udoo Neo
Besides that the project supports more than 30 variants of kernel builds Linux for various ARM and ARM64 platforms.
Main novelties of Armbian 21.05
In this new version of the distribution we can find the packages added for the Linux kernel 5.11 in which several mount options were added to Btrfs to use when recovering data from corrupted file systems, in RISC-V, support for Contiguous Memory Allocator memory allocation system, ARM 32-bit, has been added compatibility with the KASan debugging tool, support for USB 4 and more.
On the hardware support side in the distribution, we can find that added support for Orange pi R1 Plus board, fixed network issues on Nanopi K2 and Odroid boards, as well as improved stability on the NanoPi M4V2 board was achievedAlso improved support provided for NVIDIA Jetson Nano boardWhile for the NanoPC-T4 board it is mentioned that support for USB-C DisplayPort and eDP output ports is included and for the rk3399 and rockchip64 boards, HDMI-CEC and ISP1 cameras are included.
Another of the changes that stands out in this new version is that the ability to build the distribution in environments based on ARM / ARM64 and also added additional settings with DDE (Deepin Desktop Environment) and Budgie desktops.
Of the others changes that stand out from this new version of the distribution:
- The sun8i-ce platform uses the PRNG / TRNG / SHA processor instructions.
- The ZSH shell has been disabled in favor of BASH.
- The u-boot loader for Allwinner chip-based boards has been updated to version 2021.04.
- Smartmontools utility packages were added to CLI assemblies and terminatortor terminal emulator was added to builds with the Xfce desktop.
Finally, if you want to know more about it about this new version of the distribution, you can check the details in the following link.
Download Armbian
For those who are interested in being able to download the new version of this distribution for their device, they can do it directly from the page from where we can find a list of all the ARM-based computers on which the distribution runs.
Regarding the tool you can use to record the image of the system, you can make use of Etcher which is a multiplatform tool or directly in Linux from the terminal with the help of the DD command or one that you consider pertinent.