After I closed the lid of my chromebook Armbian decided to die even across reboots. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1gkEzVoY5QkNcWq3MOKYUSc8nkFYg91p-/view?usp=sharing Video of what I see https://drive.google.com/file/d/17yhnIjzkiYkkVohFrLf7MKDtYyb0xfOL/view?usp=sharing

I finally successfully got Armbian installed on my Pinebook Pro's eMMC. That should be giving it its best possible performance. I thought you may all be interested in compiling a list of games that work at least reasonably well on it given its restrictions of being ARM64 architecture, 1.8GHz CPU & 4GBs RAM. So to start here is a list of the ones I currently have on mine. I may try more later but for now I'm limited by the stock 64GB eMMC that the PCP came with... 0AD - 3D RTS Cave Story - Pixel Art Metroidvania Dr Robotnik's Ring Racers - Kart Racer Dune Legacy - RTS Endless Sky - Space Sandbox Flare - Fantasy RPG Freeciv - Strategy Freecol - Strategy GZDoom - Doom Engine for Mods & Total Conversions Hedgewars - Worms "Homage" Neverball - Monkeyball "Homage" Neverputt - Miniputt Golf Game Open Fodder - FOSS Engine for "Cannon Fodder" OpenRA - FOSS RTS Engine for "Tiberian Dawn", "Red Alert" & "Dune 2000" Open TTD - Transit Management Sim OpenTyrian - FOSS Engine for Top-Down Shmup "Tyrian" Perfect Dark - PC Port of N64 Game with Keyboard/Mouse Support Pico-8 - Indie Pixel Art Gaming & Development Platform Pingus - Lemmings "Homage" ScummVM - FOSS Engine for Classic Point & Click Games Sonic Robo Blast 2 - 3D Platformer The Ur-Quan Masters - FOSS Port of Space Sandbox "Star Control II" Xonotic - Arena Shooter FPS There are other games I have not yet personally tried like OpenHV, SuperTuxKart, other emulators etc but if anyone can confirm they work reasonably well on the Pinebook Pro then please let the rest of us know. All ScummVM games I've tried from King's Quest I to Grim Fandango work perfectly. However GZDoom will struggle with especially demanding modern Doom mods like Trenchfoot, Auger Zenith, Inquisitor III, Godless Nite etc. but most like Aliens: Eradication, Ashes 2063/Afterglow, Brutal Doom, Castlevania: Simon's Destiny, Irontusk's Diablo 3D, Revenge of the Triad etc run just fine.

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. The past two months have been particularly active for the embedded ecosystem. At EMBEDDED WORLD 2026, developers, hardware vendors, and open-source communities gathered to showcase the latest innovations shaping the future of embedded computing. In parallel, the Armbian project continues to evolve with new releases, expanded board support, and ongoing improvements to the build framework driven by the contributions of its global community and the growing demand for reliable Linux on ARM and RISC-V platforms. SPONSORED Join us in making open source better! Every donation helps Armbian improve security, performance, and reliability — so everyone can enjoy a solid foundation for their devices. Github HighlightsThis week in Armbian development saw a significant expansion of hardware support, including new board images and compatibility for devices such as the Ariaboard Photonicat 2, SpacemiT MUSE Book, NanoPC T6 Plus, and Mekotronics R58S2. Kernel patches were updated across multiple platforms, notably for Rockchip and Sunxi families, enhancing stabilityArmbian blogMichael RobinsonMy First embedded world and I Already Can’t Wait for the NextI’d been putting this off for years. Every March, I’d read someone else’s embedded world recap, tell myself “next year”, and go back to my terminal. This year I actually went and I’m still processing everything I saw. First things first: the team Before I talk about any stand orArmbian blogDaniele BriguglioArmbian Q1 2026: Technical Milestones and the Road to Embedded WorldThe first quarter of 2026 has been a period of significant technical consolidation for the Armbian project. Driven by the v26.02 (Goa) release cycle, the project has focused on three core pillars: aggressive framework refactoring, the stable rollout of the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel, and the maturation ofArmbian blogMichael RobinsonView the full article

The first quarter of 2026 has been a period of significant technical consolidation for the Armbian project. Driven by the v26.02 (Goa) release cycle, the project has focused on three core pillars: aggressive framework refactoring, the stable rollout of the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel, and the maturation of the Armbian Imager utility. Core Framework RefactoringA primary objective this quarter was the reduction of technical debt within the armbian/build repository. The development team initiated a systematic cleanup to improve build reliability and maintenance. Toolchain Optimization: Through a series of pull requests, including #9218, #9252, and #9256, significant "dead code" was removed from the internal toolchain. This refactoring simplifies the logic required to support a diversifying array of ARM and RISC-V architectures.mmdebstrap Transition: The framework has officially transitioned to mmdebstrap as the exclusive engine for rootfs creation (#9512). By deprecating the legacy debootstrap method, the project ensures faster, more consistent, and reproducible builds across varied host environments.Bash Modernization: Internal build scripts have been transitioned from POSIX to Bash syntax to leverage modern shell features and enhance overall script reliability.Kernel and Hardware IntegrationQ1 marked the broad adoption of the Linux 6.18 LTS kernel series, providing improved driver support and hardware abstraction for tier-1 platforms. Linux 6.18 LTS Rollout: Stable support for the 6.18.y kernel was merged for major families, including meson64, rockchip64, and UEFI targets (#9069, #9086).Hardware Support Expansion:SpacemiT MusePi Pro: Full integration and kernel patching were completed (#9422).Orange Pi RV2: Initial support and nightly build availability were established for this RISC-V target.Radxa Rock 4D & ODROID M2: These boards were elevated to the stable support tier within the 26.02 release.Firmware Updates: U-Boot was bumped to v2026.01 for several platforms. Notably, boot delays on the Orange Pi 5 series were addressed via updated U-Boot candidates (#9450).Ecosystem Tools: Armbian ImagerThe Armbian Imager has transitioned from a utility to a cornerstone of the project’s user experience, with a focus on security and onboarding efficiency. Cross-Platform Security: Code signing was implemented for both macOS and Windows artifacts to reduce installation friction for non-Linux users (imager#87).Performance Improvements: The utility now features optimized image decompression and enhanced device disconnect detection (imager#28).Automated Reporting: A new AI Actions Report workflow (armbian.github.io#165) was implemented to automate development highlights, providing greater transparency into the commit history for the community.Strategic Industry AlignmentThe technical trajectory of Q1 was intentionally aligned with Armbian’s presence at Embedded World 2026 in Nuremberg. By showcasing the framework and Imager as guests of Seeed Studio, the project demonstrated its readiness for industrial-scale deployment. The shift toward mainline kernel and U-Boot support—specifically targeting the retirement of vendor-specific bootloaders—remains a priority for long-term security and professional-grade stability. Contributors & Credits The progress in Q1 2026 is the result of sustained contributions from the Armbian Dev team and the wider community. Detailed changelogs and commit histories are available at github.com/armbian/build. View the full article

I'd been putting this off for years. Every March, I'd read someone else's embedded world recap, tell myself "next year", and go back to my terminal. This year I actually went and I'm still processing everything I saw. First things first: the teamBefore I talk about any stand or chip, I need to tell you what made this trip different from anything I've done before. There were five of us from the Armbian team at the show: Igor, Werner, Meko, amazingfate, and me. Five people. Four countries. Some of us had worked together for years and never met in person. You know how it is in open-source, you collaborate through GitHub, you argue about patches on the mailing list, you review each other's code at odd hours. But you don't always know the face behind the username. Meeting those people for real, shaking their hand, having a coffee together, that's something no pull request can replicate. And honestly, it was worth the trip on its own. The show itself: I wasn't ready for thisArriving at the Nuremberg Messe for the first time is a genuine shock. I knew embedded world was big. I did not know it was this big. Enormous halls, thousands of exhibitors, tens of thousands of attendees. On day one I got genuinely lost between the pavilions spent a solid half hour wandering with no idea where I was. I'm told this is a rite of passage. What surprised me most about the atmosphere is how concrete everything felt. This isn't a conference where people pitch vaporware from behind polished booths. Engineers and developers everywhere, talking about real problems, showing real hardware. You can walk from a giant like Qualcomm to a small team doing something fascinating with a handful of sensors and both conversations feel equally substantive. What we saw on the floorRockchip was a mandatory stop for us, and they didn't disappoint. On their stand: the RK3572 EVB an evaluation board we hadn't seen in person before. Reading specs in a datasheet is one thing. Seeing the board running, understanding its real-world size, its connectors, how it behaves, that's a completely different kind of knowledge. The kind you can only get by showing up. Rockchip Employees (Most left and right) and Jianfeng Liu, Mecid Urganci & Igor PecovnikSeeed Studio had live demos of AI Vision and AI Sound, and the one that genuinely impressed me was their AI camera with a built-in NPU doing real-time object recognition. I'm not talking about laggy, stuttering inference, it was smooth. Fluid. The kind of performance that makes you stop walking and just stare for a minute. Seeing that level of real-time AI running on a compact edge device was one of those moments where the future stops feeling abstract. Seedstudio x Armbian (Maximilian Riedl , Igor Pecovnik, Jianfeng Liu, Daniele Briguglio)Qualcomm brought the Arduino Ventuno Q, and this is where things got interesting and a little funny. meko had already run his benchmarks on the board when amazingfate noticed something: Chromium's hardware acceleration wasn't enabled. So he enabled it. Right there. Directly on the board. In front of the stand staff. The reaction from the Qualcomm team? Complete, genuine astonishment. They didn't see it coming. That's what happens when you bring a group of Armbian developers to a trade show, we don't just look at things, we poke at them. Armbian at the Foundries.io boothCollabora was present at the show, and amazingfate got to meet some of the team. Their kernel and GPU driver work is always relevant to what we do, so that conversation mattered even if I wasn't there for it personally. The moment that hit hardest: Armbian on the BeagleBadgeDuring a meeting with the BeagleBoard.org team inside the show, they showed us their brand new project: the BeagleBadge. Launched right there at embedded world 2026, it won Best in Show in the Wearables category; a Linux-powered wearable badge with a 4.2" ePaper display, dual-core ARM Cortex-A53, Wi-Fi 6, LoRa, and more sensors than I can list here. Built around the Texas Instruments AM62L32, manufactured by Seeed Studio. Impressive hardware. But here's the part that actually stopped me in my tracks: Armbian was running on it. There's an official "Armbian BeagleBadge demo for EW2026" image — Debian Trixie, Linux 6.12 — listed right on the BeagleBoard.org site. Our OS. On a Best-in-Show winning badge. At the world's biggest embedded show. That's not a small thing. That's the community's work showing up exactly where it matters. What embedded world taught me about where this industry is goingThree days of walking, talking, and observing gives you a pretty clear picture of the currents moving through the embedded world right now. Edge AI is not a trend anymore, it's infrastructure. Every major vendor had something running inference locally, without cloud, on modest hardware. This is real, it's shipping, and it's going to reshape what we expect embedded systems to do. Open-source has earned its seat at the table. I half-expected it to be the hobbyist corner of the show. It wasn't. Companies are building on Linux, on open stacks, on ecosystems maintained by communities like ours. That's not charity, it's strategy. And it means the work we do in Armbian matters more than we sometimes give ourselves credit for. The line between prototype and product is razor thin. At most stands you'd see a mix: shipping products, reference designs, things that will exist in six months. That gap is where the interesting information lives; what's coming, which platforms are getting serious investment, which vendors are committed to mainline Linux support. You don't learn that from a datasheet. You learn it by being there. Would I go back?Without a second thought. If you're an Armbian community member who's been putting this off the same way I was stop putting it off. The technical exposure is valuable. The networking is real. And meeting the people you build things with, face to face, is something that doesn't have a substitute. The show runs every year in Nuremberg. I'll be there. See you in 2027. 🇩🇪 View the full article