github armbian/build v26.5.1
Armbian Quarterly digest

6 hours ago

Armbian Quarterly digest

This quarter's work centers on three priorities: kernel modernization across SoC families, a redesigned desktop subsystem driven by armbian-config, and substantial expansion of board and platform coverage.

Kernel and U-Boot modernization progressed across every major family. Mainline Linux 7.0 landed for sunxi, meson64, rockchip64, rpi4b, and uefi edge targets, with a new bleedingedge branch tracking 7.1-rc on rockchip64 and meson64. Patch sets were systematically rewritten against 6.18.18–6.18.21 across rockchip64, meson64, sunxi, and uefi-x86. U-Boot moved to v2026.04 on a broad range of Rockchip boards (NanoPC-T6, NanoPi M5/R76S, Rock 5 ITX, Rock 5B Plus, Helios4/64, odroidhc4/n2, xt-q8l-v10), with BTRFS zstd fixes and LWIP additions. SpacemiT received 7.0 mainline support and a 7.1 edge bump, while sm8550 stabilized on 6.18.y.

The desktop subsystem was rebuilt around a YAML-driven, tier-based architecture in armbian-config, replacing the legacy config/desktop/ tree. The migration introduced KDE Plasma, KDE Neon, MATE, and i3-wm support, extended XFCE/MATE/i3/Xmonad/Enlightenment/Cinnamon to armhf and riscv64, and added mode=build for chroot-time installs. Supporting changes include Vulkan and panthor GPU runtime at the mid tier, libcamera/v4l and alsa-ucm-conf at minimal, branded Chromium/Firefox first-run experiences, and an APT pinning mechanism routing browsers and VS Code through apt.armbian.com. New configng modules cover code-server, Dozzle, Wallos, ZFS pool management, device tree editing, and memory management.

Board and platform coverage expanded significantly. New mainline support arrived for Arduino UNO Q (QRB2210), Mekotronics R58S2, NanoPC-T6 LTS Plus, Ariaboard Photonicat 2, EByte ECB41-PGE, NORCO EMB-3531, Cainiao CNIoT-CORE, SpacemiT MUSE Book, EasePi A2/R2, TQ-Systems TQMa8MPxS/TQMa93xxLA, Seeed reComputer devkits, and multiple Qidi X-series boards. Infrastructure improvements include a REST v1 migration for the Imager with QDL flash support for Qualcomm EDL devices, automated Hetzner runner fallback scaling, multi-arch unit tests under qemu-user, ShellCheck inline PR feedback, and a board-config validation gate. Ubuntu 26.04 (resolute) was integrated across the build matrix, package coverage, and nightly targets.

#Armbian #EmbeddedLinux #Rockchip #Kernel #UBoot #SBC

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