[News from Armbian] - v25.11 Improving the base, unlocking new options

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A more reliable release process - made together

http://blog.armbian.com/content/images/2025/11/release.png

Each release cycle brings us closer to a smoother, more predictable, and more professional workflow—and this cycle was no exception. Our release process continues to evolve with better tooling, clearer procedures, and an increasing ability to deliver consistent results across a rapidly expanding and diverse hardware ecosystem.

Despite having a significant amount of automated testing in place, the most reliable testing remains manual testing. Every image in this release was manually validated for basic functionality. This is a massive undertaking that requires time, discipline, access to hardware, and many helping hands.

Our long-term hope is to one day achieve full test automation, with a dedicated test farm performing these checks end-to-end. But building and maintaining such a system is still beyond our current resources. For now, Armbian relies on the goodwill of volunteers, contributors, and donors who believe in what we are doing.

One of the most inspiring aspects of Armbian is the community itself—a remarkable mix of long-term team members, returning contributors, and unexpected heroes who appear out of nowhere to fix something crucial, test an obscure board, or improve parts of the codebase or documentation. This blend of sustained commitment and spontaneous support is one of our greatest strengths.

And finally, I cannot express enough gratitude to our partners, whose support keeps the project moving forward. Khadas, Mekotronics, Texas Instruments, SinoVoip (Banana Pi), Inovato, Radxa, FriendlyElec, FUTO, netcup, JetHome, Libre Computer, Toolcraft, Maximum Settings, AtomoNetworks—along with several smaller partners and many individual donors—all play an essential role. Their contributions, whether hardware, infrastructure, engineering, or financial, enable us to continue improving the ecosystem, expanding hardware support, and keeping Armbian accessible to everyone.

Igor
Project Manager

Changes overview

This release advances Armbian on three fronts: more boards now run on mainline-based firmware with BTRFS boot support; hardware coverage has grown significantly across multiple vendors; and the build framework has been upgraded with mmdebstrap, the lowmem extension, first-boot configuration injection, improved release logging, and more robust keyring and mirror handling.

Destination mainline

In our continued push toward mainline kernel support across our board portfolio, this release marks a significant milestone: the progressive retirement of vendor-specific boot loaders on several boards. This strategic shift moves away from proprietary, heavily patched boot loaders toward cleaner and modern solutions. By embracing and contributing to mainline U-Boot and kernel efforts, Armbian ensures greater long-term stability, security, and easier maintenance for our users, paving the way for a more unified and future-proof embedded ecosystem.

Incoming Hardware

Texas Instruments: AM62P Starter Kit, AM62L EVM (TMDS62LEVM)
FriendlyElec: NanoPi R76S, NanoPi M5
Radxa: Radxa ROCK 4D, Radxa CM4 IO Board, Radxa E54C, Radxa Dragon Q6A
ArmSoM: ArmSoM Forge1
SinoVoip (Banana Pi): Banana Pi M5 Pro
Mekotronics: Mekotronics R58 HD, Mekotronics R58-4X4
XpressReal: XpressReal T3
9Tripod: 9Tripod X3568 v4
LuckFox: Pico Mini (RV1103), Lyra Plus, Lyra Ultra W, Lyra Zero W, Pico Pro (RV1106), Pico Max (RV1106)
Hardkernel: ODROID M1S

Note: This list includes boards across all support tiers; officially supported, standard, and Community Supported (CSC). Support level varies by vendor and device maturity.

Software, framework, and user space

On the user-facing side, we’ve added support for Debian Forky, Ubuntu 25.10, and Ubuntu 26.04 as Community Supported targets.

The build framework has also received several important enhancements. We introduced mmdebstrap across the build pipeline, enabling faster and more reliable rootfs generation. A major kernel config rewrite automation now keeps the configs in good shape with fewer conflicts, while splitting the kernel build and install steps improves caching and reduces overall build time.

Our GitHub infrastructure gained a new release-log generator covering the entire Armbian organization. We also added the lowmem extension to better support systems with under 256MB RAM and introduced user-provided first-boot configuration injection directly at build time. To improve traceability, a new inventory-artifacts CLI was added, and overall build reliability was increased through more resilient keyring and mirror fetching routines. For a complete list of changes and technical details, visit our Github.

A heartfelt thanks!

This release wouldn’t be possible without the tireless efforts of our dedicated contributors - the developers, testers, and community members who share their expertise and passion. Every line of code, every bug report, and every helpful comment moves Armbian forward - and strengthens the entire single-board computer ecosystem.

We also extend our deepest gratitude to our sponsors and donors. Your financial support is crucial, it directly enables us to cover infrastructure costs, acquire new hardware for testing, and sustain the project’s continued growth. Your contributions make all of this possible.

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