Welcome to the latest Armbian Newsletter: your source for the latest developments, community highlights, and behind-the-scenes updates from the world of open-source ARM and RISC-V computing.
This week: the desktop installer in armbian-config has been rebuilt from the ground up tiered installs, clean uninstalls, and snap-free native browsers across all architectures. Armbian Imager 2.0 is out, rewritten interface and flashing engine, with boards that boot already configured (username, Wi-Fi, timezone) and byte-for-byte write verification. And the NanoPi M5 becomes the first RK3576 board to boot end-to-end from UFS on mainline U-Boot, with no proprietary image in the loop.
Github Highlights
This week’s work centers on board portfolio expansion, kernel and U-Boot version bumps, and CI and infrastructure hardening across the build and documentation pipelines. Board support saw notable growth with the introduction of the SpacemiT K3 Pico-ITX and Luckfox Nova (RK3308B), alongside a new generic uefi-arm64-dt family and board intended
Native UFS boot lands on the NanoPi M5
Armbian’s next release boots the FriendlyElec NanoPi M5 end-to-end from UFS on a mainline U-Boot, with no proprietary recovery image in the loop. It is the first RK3576 board in the catalogue to reach this state, and the integration pattern paves the way for the others. UFS, the storage class
Meet our new Armbian Imager 2.0
We’re releasing Armbian Imager 2.0. We rebuilt the whole thing, the interface and the flashing engine underneath it. The part you’ll notice first: your board boots already set up. Username, password, Wi-Fi, timezone, language. You tell Imager once, it writes that into the image, and the board comes up
We rewrote how Armbian installs desktops. Here’s what changed
A friendlier, faster, snap-free desktop install in armbian-config If you’ve installed a desktop environment with armbian-config over the last few months, you may have noticed things feel different: there’s a tier you can pick, the browser actually works on every arch, uninstall doesn’t take half your system with it, and
