This cycle is defined by the launch of the armbian/external packaging pipeline, broad kernel and U-Boot version bumps across platforms, and substantial desktop and repository infrastructure work. The new armbian/external repository establishes a dedicated build and mirror pipeline for third-party software, with tooling for dependency checks, parallel sync, incremental uploads, and a package site published at external.armbian.com. Initial payloads include charsiu for the RK3576 NPU, developer too
