Recently the launch of the new version of the Linux distribution "Armbian 22.02", in which a number of changes have been made that improve some aspects of the distribution, but that the developers wanted to take advantage of to publicize various factors that go around with the development of the distribution.
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 11 and Ubuntu 21.04 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.
Main novelties of Armbian 22.02
In this new version of the distribution that is presented, the developers shared in the release note some aspects related to the distribution and one of them is that October of last year they had launched a request for help to the community and to which in the announcement express their gratitude:
The response has generally been positive. We have already updated and made public the new (previously internal) list of Board Maintainers.
We would like to extend our sincere thanks to all the people who have volunteered to contribute their valuable time, energy, and other resources to the project. It really means a lot to us and it's things like that that really get us through all the other challenges.
However, as you can see, there are still quite a few blanks in the linked table above. And there are also several vacant positions to fill.
So we feel that this has been a good start, however we also believe that we still have a long way to go before our project can be truly sustainable in the long term. We have some additional ideas along those lines, which we would like to develop in the next sections.
For the part of the changes and improvements that were made in this new version of Armbian 22.02, it stands out, for example, that sand implemented the ability to generate continuously updated builds based on Debian Sid (unstable) packages as well as Debian 11 based builds. prepared builds are offered based on the upcoming release of Ubuntu 22.04.
On the other hand, it is highlighted that stable builds were deployed and continuously updated for x86 and ARM boards using UEFI based on Debian/Ubuntu Grub bootloader instead of u-boot. With which this version is the first to include UEFI support, both for arm64 and x86, in addition to not including DTB, but based on the operation of the UEFI firmware provided by the vendor.
It has also been confirmed in arm64 that the version works on some UEFI boards and servers. Some SBC vendors also offer UEFI emulation for their vendor's firmware, so this could be a good alternative for u-boot boards.
We can also find in Armbian 22.02 that added 64-bit builds specifically optimized for Raspberry Pi boards and that compilation tests in continuous integration systems have also been improved.
On the other hand, it is highlighted that a new framework has been introduced to connect extensions to the assembly system ( Extensions Build Framework).
Finally if you are interested in knowing a little more about it about this new release, 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.