Stable SBC with ubuntu and 4.4>= kernel for btrfs?

[rick]

I am looking for recommendations, the outstanding group here has knowledge of pretty much every board out there I would think.

 

I have had to abandon my OPI projects today. They are just not stable/usable. A board specific crash at every turn. Comes with a legacy kernel that doesn't even support a working BTRFS. The up to date mainline kernel is also far from working I am told. Ethernet masq causes reboot, out of memory killing processes/servers while there is lots of free ram and swap, SD slot crashes periodically making the system unusable till the storage is removed and is checked/repaired by a working system. So, even working around everything, with a replacement network dongle and USB storage for all but my boot file system and rs232 console it still doesn't quite work right.

 

Can anyone recommend something that is ready to use now?

 

Is there a single board system available that runs a 4.4>= kernel well with ubuntu/deb repos backing the os (for continued updates), has a decent dual/quad core, ethernet,  usb ports, basic hdmi for troubleshooting, and 1gb or better ram? Wifi, would be a bonus. I am looking Ideally for a baseline device that is modest cost effective, but would also like to find a second beefier one that has more cpu, more ram, more muscle but takes power into consideration (15W max?)

 

I would like to run armbian, but could be flexible as long as it runs Ubuntu Xenial (or Debian) and gets mostly updated from the official repos. I hope it's ok to ask that.

 

I am building/replacing  a bunch of personal nextcloud servers, mini SOHO file sync/printerserver/.... boxes, and custom firewall/NAT/router/gateway type boxes that my predecessor put together at different sites. They will replace power hungry "legacy" x86 running on discarded systems/virtual systems that are on all the time but idle for most of that and make heat and take up so much space. It's a nightmare patchwork that fits into a pi type boxes really nicely when the Oranges don't drive me to the rotten Bananas, pun intended.  It's a side project, but I look bad now because it has come to nothing but promises after almost a year.

[Igor]

Some ideas:

 

Allwinner A20 based

Cheap and solid, limited read / write SATA speed (as most those cheap boards), but provide full battery backup, also for single 2.5inch drive:
https://www.armbian.com/olimex-lime-2-emmc/

 

Marvell Armada 38x based
Expensive but full SATA(via mPCI) or M2 speed:

https://www.armbian.com/clearfog-base/

And even more options:

https://www.armbian.com/clearfog/

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/helios4/helios4-personal-cloud-the-worlds-1st-open-source#

 

Both platforms are very well supported in modern kernel.

[tkaiser]

53 minutes ago, rick said:

I am building/replacing  a bunch of personal nextcloud servers, mini SOHO file sync/printerserver/.... boxes, and custom firewall/NAT/router/gateway type boxes that my predecessor put together at different sites.

 

https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/4289-orange-pi-zero-with-gigabit-ethernet-for-10/&do=findComment&comment=31957

 

If you can accept low performance most probably any of the supported A20 boards is the best choice but I would start new designs today better with EspressoBin (even if software is not fully ready yet but that's no problem for me)