Published release of the Linux distribution Armbian 26.8, providing a compact system environment for single board computers with processors based on ARM, RISC-V and x86 architectures, supporting various models of Raspberry Pi, Odroid, Orange Pi, Banana Pi, Helios64, pine64, Nanopi and Cubieboard based on Allwinner, Amlogic, Actionsemi, Freescale / NXP, Marvell processors Armada, Rockchip, Radxa and Samsung Exynos.
Debian and Ubuntu package bases are used to create assemblies, but all components are completely rebuilt using its own assembly system with optimizations included to reduce size, increase performance and apply additional security mechanisms. For example, the /var/log partition is mounted using zram and stored in RAM in a compressed form with data flushed to the drive once a day or upon shutdown. The /tmp partition is mounted using tmpfs.
The project supports more than 30 variants of Linux kernel builds for different ARM and ARM64 platforms. An SDK is provided to simplify the creation of your own system images, packages and distribution editions. ZSWAP is used for swapping. When logging in via SSH, an option is provided to use two-factor authentication. The box64 emulator is included, allowing you to run programs compiled for processors based on the x86 architecture. Ready-made packages are offered for launching user environments based on KDE, GNOME, Budgie, Cinnamon, i3wm, Mate, Xfce and Xmonad.
Main changes in Armbian 26.8:
- The installer has been rewritten, which now comes in the form of a module armbian-config instead of a standalone script and is covered when performing unit testing. To work with flash memory, SPI (Serial Peripheral Interface) and MTD (Memory Technology Device) interfaces are supported, separate handlers for eMMC and NVMe are implemented, support for replacing the bootloader is added.
- The Armbian Imager toolkit has been updated to version 2.0, providing an interface for selecting and loading system images, recording to an SD card and initial system configuration. For boards based on Qualcomm chips with UFS (Universal Flash Storage) memory, the ability to flash firmware using the QDL (Qualcomm Device Loader) toolkit has been added. Improved detection of connected devices on Windows and Linux. The ability to