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Armbian v25.5: Expanding Horizons, Honoring Community, and Powering the ARM Ecosystem

The Armbian team is proud to announce the release of Armbian v25.5—a significant update that reinforces the project’s commitment to delivering a reliable, high-performance Linux experience for ARM-based devices. This release highlights continued progress across the system, including deeper hardware support, enhanced tooling, and growing application modularity through armbian-config.

In addition to the technical achievements, the community has received international recognition for its leadership and innovation in open-source infrastructure: Armbian has been awarded the 2025 NetBox Hero Award by NetBox Labs, joining a prestigious list of projects that have demonstrated meaningful impact in automation and open infrastructure practices.

What’s New in v25.5

This release brings dozens of contributions from across the Armbian community, targeting system performance, configuration management, and hardware enablement. Noteworthy improvements include:

  • Extended board support: The release introduces or improves compatibility for several boards including the TI SK-AM69 (PR #7885), Banana Pi M2+ (PR #8127), BeagleBone AI-64 (PR #7918), BeaglePlay (PR #7917), and PocketBeagle2 (PR #7897). These additions reflect Armbian’s growing footprint across both legacy and cutting-edge single-board computers (SBCs).

  • Upstream firmware integration: Rockchip devices like the Rock 5B and Youyeetoo R1 now enjoy better audio and HDMI support (PR #7925, PR #7934). U-Boot versions were bumped for key platforms to align with upstream.

  • Kernel upgrades: Devices based on Rockchip64 now run on Linux kernel 6.14 (edge branch), bringing better performance and peripheral support. Additionally, kernel patching logic is now configurable (PR #8149), allowing developers to build plain mainline kernel.

  • Filesystem and boot enhancements: Improvements to EFI partition alignment (PR #8053) and BTRFS subvolume support further refine system boot behavior and make image generation more flexible for custom installations.

  • Stability and quality improvements: Updates include boot script fixes, enhanced serial console support, and a simplified logging framework, all designed to improve diagnostics and system reliability during early boot and provisioning phases.

armbian-config: Simplifying Post-Install System Management

One of the biggest areas of growth in Armbian v25.5 is the continued evolution of armbian-config—a system utility for configuring Armbian images after installation. Whether setting up a home automation server or managing Docker containers at the edge, armbian-config now offers an impressive set of tools in a modular and approachable interface.

  • Application library: Users can now deploy popular self-hosted applications directly from armbian-config, including Home Assistant (PR #235), Stirling PDF (PR #295), Navidrome (PR #367), Grafana (PR #351), NetData (PR #289), and Immich (PR #575). These modules are installed in isolated environments, making them easy to deploy, manage, and remove.

  • Network and system settings: A more robust Wi-Fi station detection system improves wireless setup reliability (PR #286). New schematics and better documentation provide helpful context during network interface configuration (PR #278, PR #280).

  • Overlay and BSP switching: Logic for board-specific overlays is now dynamically loaded, ensuring options are shown only where supported (PR #285). The BSP switching tool has been patched to correctly detect the branch being used (PR #281), and header installation logic was refactored to reduce redundancy (PR #277).

These improvements reinforce armbian-config as a trusted utility for both new users and experienced developers building production or custom systems.

NetBox Hero Award: Community Excellence Recognized

Armbian’s impact reaches beyond code. In this release cycle, the project was selected as one of the winners of the 2025 NetBox Hero Awards by NetBox Labs. This award celebrates the community’s dedication to infrastructure innovation, automation, and transparency.

Armbian was recognized specifically for its “elegant and extensible use of NetBox in support of a broad set of infrastructure needs.” This acknowledgment affirms the project’s alignment with modern infrastructure tooling and its unique role at the intersection of embedded systems and open infrastructure platforms.

Read more: https://netboxlabs.com/blog/announcing-the-netbox-hero-award-winners-for-2025/

Recognized Contributors

This release wouldn’t be possible without the contributors who authored the pull requests featured in v25.5. We thank:

We also extend our appreciation to those who helped through bug reporting, testing, translations, documentation, and community moderation.

Get Involved

Armbian is open to all. Whether you want to contribute code, write documentation, test releases, or just ask questions—there’s a place for you.

Looking Ahead

Armbian v25.5 is not just a technical milestone—it’s a testament to the collaborative power of open source. With a stronger foundation, broader hardware support, and a growing ecosystem of modular tools, Armbian is well-positioned to lead the future of ARM-based Linux computing.

Full change logs: build framework, armbian-config

 

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