Igor

Release Candidate Code Freeze Date: TBD
Release Planning Meeting Date: 2021-10-16 1400GMT
Release Date: TDB
Release Candidate Branch Link: TBD 
Release Changelog: TBD
Release Coordinator: @igor
 
We are in doubts to make this release at all due to overall project strengthening and focus on securing maintainers and cut HW which doesn't have it. Alternative idea is to produce a release as is with minimal changes and focus on bug fixing straight from today.

Meeting is this Saturday, to get on common grounds.
 
@Igor@Werner @TonyMac32 @martinayotte@piter75 @ning@Myy@balbes150 @sfx2000 @ebin-dev@chwe@gprovost@aprayoga@5kft@JMCC@going@jeanrhum@dolphs @jock@belfastraven@TRS-80@Bozza@Rich Neese@sgjava@Mangix@tony013

Release Candidate Code Freeze Date: TBD
Release Planning Meeting Date: 2021-10-16 1400GMT
Release Date: TDB
Release Candidate Branch Link: TBD 
Release Changelog: TBD
Release Coordinator: @igor
 
We are in doubts to make this release at all due to overall project strengthening and focus on securing maintainers and cut HW which doesn't have it. Alternative idea is to produce a release as is with minimal changes and focus on bug fixing straight from today.

Meeting is this Saturday, to get on common grounds.
 
@Igor@Werner @TonyMac32 @martinayotte@piter75 @ning@Myy@balbes150 @sfx2000 @ebin-dev@chwe@gprovost@aprayoga@5kft@JMCC@going@jeanrhum@dolphs @jock@belfastraven@TRS-80@Bozza@Rich Neese@sgjava@Mangix@tony013

HW is one thing. The biggest part:
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#development-time
https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/#support-time
 
This helps a lot more to create value:
https://forum.armbian.com/forum/54-help-wanted/
then donating hardware we can usually get for free.
 
Market:
https://forum.armbian.com/forum/55-market-place/

If we rule out deliberate cheating by Amlogic (to show bigger numbers and numbers are what people are buying), then yes, others are nothing better. But what you are not understanding at all is the difference between a complete trash (Amlogic/Rockchip/Allwinner TV box) and single board computer, a board that comes at least with a documentation and a team of engineers to provide some support. Also if there is not enough additional people / community, that will dig "read" the hardware, you can simply forget about. Cost of support is everything and bringing some garbage hardware from zero to the average Joe level is insane if there is not heavily community backing. There is a lot more hardware out there then people with interest and knowledge to do something about. A lot more.
 

According to your posts you have no intention nor knowledge to work on. Perhaps I am wrong? Armbian maintainers have common stand to not support any hardware on the extreme end since frustration of not being able to get anywhere is too high and it also cost 10 - 50x more. Remember that dealing with is 99% our private money that goes into your pleasure. And ain't small. I lost on average around 10h every day working on this project. I just lost 1h trying to explain something. And I am not alone. 

If average Joe wants bringing Linux on shit TV box, he can forget about seeking our free help, but otherwise, for normal hardware that comes with proper documentation and optional some vendor support we have "Board bring up section", so that posts as such are not scattered around forum. Its 2021. Market is saturated with all sorts of cheap hardware and all of them are seeking free community support without which they are just a paperweight. Currently its near to impossible to get eyes on something new. We barely can maintain / keep this hw usable. Each upstream upgrade kills some of the board or its primary function. That's the reality average Linux fan forgets and live his dream ... Vendor proprietary sw doesn't break since it never receives any updates. That is the key of "success", while maintaining mainline based sw is something different. More expensive and receive no support. Not from you, not from vendor. You want that, while vendor would like rather to push you their software where he might have some advantage from competition stored in closed library. Under their control. Its not about open / free so much, I agree on that point with you, but about the level of control.
 
 
You mean the most expensive part? Without any financial backing for developers / maintainers, free of charge. You already have a lot of that, you just don't notice and care and want more and better. That's the world of average Joe.

Documentation for average Joe: https://docs.armbian.com/ Images ready to run without any difficulties - burn and run, images are even tested for you https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported so average "customer" doesn't waste their precious time. Then community supported tutorials for whatever you need: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/40-reviews-tutorials-hardware-hacks/ or 3rd party https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials
 

Starting at average Joe level - contribution to Linux kernel directly require more rules which are hard sticking to for a beginner. You can start at more user friendly level: https://www.armbian.com/get-involved/
 

https://www.armbian.com/donate
Start covering what you have - you only cover around 0.5% of our running costs, 0.0% for TV boxes. From paperweight to running Linux. TV box is not a PC so it can't run as a PC. Its closer to embedded experiences or lets say it is something in between. Its cheapest possible form of single board computer, of barebone. Also we don't have resources of a desktop PC and we don't have (yet) proper foss drivers to support hardware function, we don't have acceleration within web browser, ... Each ARM family is like another architecture. Diverse, purpose oriented ARM world is far more complicated than heavily standardised PC world ...

and due to lack of any technical specs, development is not possible. Only more wasteful hacking and reverse engineering. If hardware is not under full control of community, open, it's pointless to invest sw support. Vendor can screw you up at any time. Can disable & enable features, can manipulate numbers ... 
 

BSP kernels from all vendors are already at 4.4 - 4.9 but they are full of non-standard solutions, shitty cheaply made solutions, closed drivers, etc. Usually only vendor engineers maintain that private kernel which they "support". This hasn't changed.
 

Marketing BS.
 
But I heard they are supporting some Foss development, porting drivers to mainline, but could also be just rummers. And kernel is just one thing. The easy part. You have to load this kernel somehow ... and here, things are certainly not (yet) foss. Not at Amlogic, not with Rpi ...
 
Also please do some forum search - we have been through those questions many times.

Thermal sensor support for H616 SoC
 
https://github.com/armbian/build/pull/3153

https://forum.armbian.com/index.php?/topic/3945-mmc-no-card-present-error-on-allwinner-boards
 

Problem was fixed and its super cool that solution was found this fast. Its not uncommon that a weeks goes by and a problem is not solved (you can imagine expense of lost week, while users are willing to give perhaps 20 USD for that while asking for more at the same time). You just need to wait that maintainers and infrastructure makes the rest. I don't have information, when images will be up - its a complicated procedure since its not designed to satisfy just one person needs. Checking manually when correct image will show up (you can also do that) and manually notifying you is not an option. 

I think by editing /etc/default/armbian-motd and changing STORAGE to something else than your hard drive device.

Likewise  

My distribution of choice was also Slackware - IIRC v1.0 / there was not much choices at that time - in my case, Linux kernel has not even 1.0 
 
A lot has change since.
 

With totally limited resources we are trying to make this very complicated, purpose driven and diverse ecosystem as simple as possible.
 

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/
https://docs.armbian.com/#what-is-armbian

FAT partition is not needed, perhaps only for amateur usage. So that people who have Windows, can access this part and change thing. While most of them have no knowledge what to do with those files, so it is pretty irrelevant. FAT partition is there because all those distro tries to mimic Raspberry Pi, while cheap mainstream toy is not our amusement to follow. Raspberry Pi can't boot from anything else due its proprietary construction ...
 
Armbian controls this hardware with a very different modern hardware interface, written from scratch, from the moment you plug the power. There is no relationship with the demo level software you are mention as a working ones. Those were made just to present hardware functions and abandoned right after then. Many years ago. I am sure you don't want to use those and I highly recommend you to stay away from those other (fake) distros.
 
Also make sure to read this.
 

We need to know:

- exact version of boot loader (u-boot) very early print
- armbianmonitor -u (if you have network operational)
- cat cat /etc/armbian-release 
- do you have monitor attached and what kind of
- how do you power the board
 
Helping you is our expense. You can also try asking for support at Lemaker, but I am 100% sure nobody will answer to you. Not at any distro you are mentioning.

Likewise  

My distribution of choice was also Slackware - IIRC v1.0 / there was not much choices at that time - in my case, Linux kernel has not even 1.0 
 
A lot has change since.
 

With totally limited resources we are trying to make this very complicated, purpose driven and diverse ecosystem as simple as possible.
 

https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/
https://docs.armbian.com/#what-is-armbian

I would like to prevent this to happen, but this is not as simple as it might looks like. Luckily I do have experiences from professional / corporate world and I know how they are approaching and what kind of resources are needed to move a little up. In the place I have cooperated we were working on a few of different devices, which complexity was a bit higher then our most complicated SBCs, but we had more then 100 full time people just for quality control. They were conducting and improving testing procedures round the clock, but well paying customers which developers never had chance to be pressured from, were keep sending bugs ...

Armbian has some primitive bug detection tooling and nobody dedicated on this. Also no budget to expand - I have very little time to do more then this, We would need at least a full time person of my know-how level and strong dedication just for testing areas plus help of a few volunteers. Just to make a small noticeable difference.

https://github.com/armbian/build/actions/workflows/build.yml
Or by using nightly kernels which are 24h old in worst case.

yes.

Hi all.
I've done a collaboration with @Igor, the creator of Armbian.
He shows and talks about the hardware that is used to maintain the project. Servers, boards, other electronics, ...
Enjoy!

More videos to come.
 

I have expected you will think about why I told you that. You can skip my rant below and read https://docs.armbian.com/User-Guide_FAQ/ Most of the answers are there.
 
I am commonly sad because I can't help people that are genuine helpful, friendly, respectful and are willing to repay when asking for help. This is the base to form a healthy relationship. People that understand they are asking for a favour.
 
As a person in any role I can't support putting a pressure to developers / doers / makers that are around, nor support suicidal behaviour. If I notice something like that is happening I have to take a side and support one, trying to reason the other. Since I can't afford to spent indefinite time (=money) for reasoning "customers" which shows to little respect to the platform we maintain and support (I understand anger from users because something failed)  ... while crushing is cheap and usually effective. If I pick your side, you will lost people that creates you value pretty quickly. Nevertheless we wrote some community rules which should help us all avoiding having conversations derailed in first place. "Bumping topic is not a nice thing to do, seeking for attention - keep your ego to yourself, ask politely without pressure, you who came here on this forum.". 
 
I would gladly deal with "you" on the level you expect, but there are too many of "you" any "you" are already having a huge https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt:_The_First_5000_Years while contributing 1000 x too little to match your wishes and demands. This is nothing to do with you personally. This is just a perception users have. 

Asking what you can do for us is probably far better strategy to get something in return. We have many known bugs, and no resources to deal with them. We have much much too many requests for attention and way too little time to deal with. Some ideas: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/54-help-wanted/ When I saw someone that is also busy and inpatient, asking just for some money is perhaps best? Even chances to get costs covered by a person who is making it are close to 0%, the same goes with an interest to help that person.

yes.

Armbian have historically been much more geared towards "server/headless" usage, for many different reasons.  It has taken a much longer time not only for upstream development of underlying graphical libraries / drivers to mature, but also for us (the Armbian project itself) to come up with a sensible implementation that would fit nicely into our existing build framework.
 
However, this work has been going on in the background for quite some time already. 
 
Announcement
 
Finally, the time is right to announce we are publishing our initial implementation of these "desktop" features!
 
Warning!

We are only announcing this here on our own forums for the time being, as this is still early days.  In fact, at this point we are still mainly looking for testers. You should consider this an alpha quality release at this time!
 
What works so far?

Features we plan to develop works, we are already hunting bugs for months, but they are certainly still present. Remember, we are not looking for bugs that are tied to specific hardware feature, but bugs that are linked to the build process, userland and basic desktop functionality. 
 
Report bugs in Armbian build framework section: https://forum.armbian.com/forum/12-armbian-build-framework/
 
Currently, the following Desktop Environments (DEs) are considered to have early "support":
 

 

 
In addition, there are more DEs which should be considered very much WIP, in other words, not really fully working (yet), but we designed a system that can have unlimited variants.
 
Help Wanted!
 
These changes are wide ranging and touch many parts of the code.  Therefore even if you don't plan on using any "desktop" features, your testing can help to find bugs, even in "server" versions (as eventually this code will be merged with master in matter of weeks).
 
If you have been looking for some opportunity to help the project by getting involved a bit more, this could be your chance!

When you notice a problem make a pull request: https://github.com/armbian/build/pulls ( currently sits on a branch "desktop" )
 
Going forward we will be looking for additional desktop maintainers.  Currently the plan is for the Armbian core team to maintain the framework and perhaps settle on 2-3 DE options.  Any which are to be considered in addition to that, will need to come with some commitment to ongoing maintenance by whoever is interested in those additional desktops.
 
Join #armbian-devel IRC channel for development level chat and strengthen the desktop team. Welcome!
 
Getting Started
 
If this is your very first time using the build scripts, start with general instructions. If you are already familiar with the basics of building, some additional detailed instructions pertaining to desktop features can be found here.  You will also need to add:
 
./compile.sh LIB_TAG=desktop EXPERT=yes  
If you don't have option or desire to build from sources, you can also check if your board has nightly images - we are compiling them from this new development branch for a few weeks now - for the desktop you want to try / see:


 
Documentation
 
For end users, if you just want to build image interactively and by choosing supported OS variants, things hasn't changed much and should just work while advanced documentation has changed significantly. Its pretty much WIP and is scattered around in those files:
 
https://github.com/armbian/build/blob/desktop/config/desktop/README.md
https://github.com/armbian/documentation/pull/125
https://github.com/armbian/documentation/pull/98
 
Additional
 
During this change we also added most recent userland(s):
 

Armbian is an established Linux for single board computers that is used in enterprise, IOT micro services and various hobby deployments. Recent desktop improvements bring the platform on-par with key players in the Linux desktop arena while keeping the key advantage – you can easily build your own Linux distribution.
 
 
 
 
Armbian provides stable releases every three months. They are driven by CURRENT LTS kernel. Adventurers which likes rolling releases, can check EDGE releases which are using latest daily kernel builds with fresh packages from sid, hirsute or impish userland.
 
Armbian has powerful build system which can build a whole Linux distribution, an OS image or a kernel. Key advantages are simplicity, speed and excellent hardware support. Provides native or cross compilation.
 
This release is hard work of exceptional individuals who have contributed their time and expertise into this release. Many thanks to – in alphabetic order:

@balbes150 @AristoChen @belegdol @Werner@Heisath @iav @Igor @Icenowy @lanefu @jock @piter75@Rich Neese@rpardini@going @tkaiser @tparys @TonyMac32 @Azq2 @henkiejan1 @juanesf @psztoch, @redchenjs @Uglymotha

Special thanks to users and vendors @orangepi, @friendlyelec, @khadas and @olimex that understand the importance of our work and supports the project with donations of cash, hardware & expertise.

Enjoy!
 
Highlights
 
minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon and Budgie desktop fast and effective automated language selection on first run regular stable and daily beta & EDGE updates CLI is powered with ZSH or BASH added automated kernel upgrade on EDGE 5.13.y kernels added mainline based SPI boot support for Odroid HC4 added Qemu virtual Armbian builds added CSC images for Tinkerboard 2, Rockpi N10, added ZFS upgrade to v2.1 improved Github Actions CI and CDN network added Cinnamon and Budgie desktop enabled 3D support wherever its possible and works reasonble well added Khadas VIM1-3 & Edge boards, Avnet Microzed enabled VPU support for Rockchip added legacy kernel support for OrangepiZero2, Nvidia Jetson declare Ubuntu Hirsute and Debian Bullseye packages as stable added Ubuntu Impish and Debian Sid as beta build targets added KDE plasma DE as a beta build target
Details:
 
What’s Left
 
long term armbian-config refactoring upgrading Rockchip u-boot from 2010.y to latest resolving Allwinner boot troubles on last u-boot enable 3D on Meson G12 / SM1 infrastructure improvements: mirros, runners, publishing.  
Details:
 
Tough Decisions
 
Odroid C4/HC4 boot problem has to remain unresolved in CURRENT 5.10.y kernel since fixing it would break Khadas boards. Problem was properly solved in EDGE kernel. We had to disable 3D on latest Amlogic boards due to instability Leaving behind published Deepin, Enlightenment, Gnome, i3, KDE plasma, Mate, Xmonad desktop due to space constrains and lack of maintenance. These options are still available within the build tool.  
Known problems
 
XFCE desktop is missing package gvfs-backends and xarchiver bullseye doesn’t properly detect locales Helios64 eMMC IO errors with CURRENT kernel OrangepiZero2 EDGE kernel based image doesn’t boot. Will be fixed in bug fix release.  

Armbian is an established Linux for single board computers that is used in enterprise, IOT micro services and various hobby deployments. Recent desktop improvements bring the platform on-par with key players in the Linux desktop arena while keeping the key advantage – you can easily build your own Linux distribution.
 
 
 
 
Armbian provides stable releases every three months. They are driven by CURRENT LTS kernel. Adventurers which likes rolling releases, can check EDGE releases which are using latest daily kernel builds with fresh packages from sid, hirsute or impish userland.
 
Armbian has powerful build system which can build a whole Linux distribution, an OS image or a kernel. Key advantages are simplicity, speed and excellent hardware support. Provides native or cross compilation.
 
This release is hard work of exceptional individuals who have contributed their time and expertise into this release. Many thanks to – in alphabetic order:

@balbes150 @AristoChen @belegdol @Werner@Heisath @iav @Igor @Icenowy @lanefu @jock @piter75@Rich Neese@rpardini@going @tkaiser @tparys @TonyMac32 @Azq2 @henkiejan1 @juanesf @psztoch, @redchenjs @Uglymotha

Special thanks to users and vendors @orangepi, @friendlyelec, @khadas and @olimex that understand the importance of our work and supports the project with donations of cash, hardware & expertise.

Enjoy!
 
Highlights
 
minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon and Budgie desktop fast and effective automated language selection on first run regular stable and daily beta & EDGE updates CLI is powered with ZSH or BASH added automated kernel upgrade on EDGE 5.13.y kernels added mainline based SPI boot support for Odroid HC4 added Qemu virtual Armbian builds added CSC images for Tinkerboard 2, Rockpi N10, added ZFS upgrade to v2.1 improved Github Actions CI and CDN network added Cinnamon and Budgie desktop enabled 3D support wherever its possible and works reasonble well added Khadas VIM1-3 & Edge boards, Avnet Microzed enabled VPU support for Rockchip added legacy kernel support for OrangepiZero2, Nvidia Jetson declare Ubuntu Hirsute and Debian Bullseye packages as stable added Ubuntu Impish and Debian Sid as beta build targets added KDE plasma DE as a beta build target
Details:
 
What’s Left
 
long term armbian-config refactoring upgrading Rockchip u-boot from 2010.y to latest resolving Allwinner boot troubles on last u-boot enable 3D on Meson G12 / SM1 infrastructure improvements: mirros, runners, publishing.  
Details:
 
Tough Decisions
 
Odroid C4/HC4 boot problem has to remain unresolved in CURRENT 5.10.y kernel since fixing it would break Khadas boards. Problem was properly solved in EDGE kernel. We had to disable 3D on latest Amlogic boards due to instability Leaving behind published Deepin, Enlightenment, Gnome, i3, KDE plasma, Mate, Xmonad desktop due to space constrains and lack of maintenance. These options are still available within the build tool.  
Known problems
 
XFCE desktop is missing package gvfs-backends and xarchiver bullseye doesn’t properly detect locales Helios64 eMMC IO errors with CURRENT kernel OrangepiZero2 EDGE kernel based image doesn’t boot. Will be fixed in bug fix release.  

Armbian is an established Linux for single board computers that is used in enterprise, IOT micro services and various hobby deployments. Recent desktop improvements bring the platform on-par with key players in the Linux desktop arena while keeping the key advantage – you can easily build your own Linux distribution.
 
 
 
 
Armbian provides stable releases every three months. They are driven by CURRENT LTS kernel. Adventurers which likes rolling releases, can check EDGE releases which are using latest daily kernel builds with fresh packages from sid, hirsute or impish userland.
 
Armbian has powerful build system which can build a whole Linux distribution, an OS image or a kernel. Key advantages are simplicity, speed and excellent hardware support. Provides native or cross compilation.
 
This release is hard work of exceptional individuals who have contributed their time and expertise into this release. Many thanks to – in alphabetic order:

@balbes150 @AristoChen @belegdol @Werner@Heisath @iav @Igor @Icenowy @lanefu @jock @piter75@Rich Neese@rpardini@going @tkaiser @tparys @TonyMac32 @Azq2 @henkiejan1 @juanesf @psztoch, @redchenjs @Uglymotha

Special thanks to users and vendors @orangepi, @friendlyelec, @khadas and @olimex that understand the importance of our work and supports the project with donations of cash, hardware & expertise.

Enjoy!
 
Highlights
 
minimal, server or XFCE, Cinnamon and Budgie desktop fast and effective automated language selection on first run regular stable and daily beta & EDGE updates CLI is powered with ZSH or BASH added automated kernel upgrade on EDGE 5.13.y kernels added mainline based SPI boot support for Odroid HC4 added Qemu virtual Armbian builds added CSC images for Tinkerboard 2, Rockpi N10, added ZFS upgrade to v2.1 improved Github Actions CI and CDN network added Cinnamon and Budgie desktop enabled 3D support wherever its possible and works reasonble well added Khadas VIM1-3 & Edge boards, Avnet Microzed enabled VPU support for Rockchip added legacy kernel support for OrangepiZero2, Nvidia Jetson declare Ubuntu Hirsute and Debian Bullseye packages as stable added Ubuntu Impish and Debian Sid as beta build targets added KDE plasma DE as a beta build target
Details:
 
What’s Left
 
long term armbian-config refactoring upgrading Rockchip u-boot from 2010.y to latest resolving Allwinner boot troubles on last u-boot enable 3D on Meson G12 / SM1 infrastructure improvements: mirros, runners, publishing.  
Details:
 
Tough Decisions
 
Odroid C4/HC4 boot problem has to remain unresolved in CURRENT 5.10.y kernel since fixing it would break Khadas boards. Problem was properly solved in EDGE kernel. We had to disable 3D on latest Amlogic boards due to instability Leaving behind published Deepin, Enlightenment, Gnome, i3, KDE plasma, Mate, Xmonad desktop due to space constrains and lack of maintenance. These options are still available within the build tool.  
Known problems
 
XFCE desktop is missing package gvfs-backends and xarchiver bullseye doesn’t properly detect locales Helios64 eMMC IO errors with CURRENT kernel OrangepiZero2 EDGE kernel based image doesn’t boot. Will be fixed in bug fix release.  

eMMC troubles has been reported on other RK3399 boards such as Nanopi T4. Since we didn't do anything in this area I suspect someone pushed bad code upstream. Need analysis, while I don't see possibility to check and fix in the following weeks.