ubuntu-rockchip continuation fork (defcom5-v1.0.0) — Orange Pi 5B, vendor 6.1 kernel, security-patched

[defcom5-rockchip]

Orange Pi 5B subforum has recurring threads about eMMC boot loops, WiFi/Bluetooth regressions on mainline kernels, and the general "what image actually works on this thing" question. Joshua-Riek's ubuntu-rockchip was a common answer to that for a long time, but it was archived recently. This is a personal continuation fork in case it's useful to anyone working through those same issues.

What this is:
- Fork of Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip (archived) — same vendor 6.1 kernel base, not mainline
- Therefore: onboard WiFi/BT works (no mainline driver regressions), eMMC boots reliably
- Scope: Orange Pi 5B + Ubuntu 24.04 (Noble) only. jammy/oracular/plucky suite configs removed.
- Single-maintainer hobby project. Best-effort, no SLA.

v1.0.0 contents:
- Kernel ABI bumped to 6.1.0-1027.27
- Backported CVE-2026-46333 (ssh-keysign-pwn) — upstream commit 31e62c2ebbfd cherry-picked onto noble-security branch
- Build-kernel.sh patched for GCC 14+ host compatibility (the 6.1 vendor tree's -Werror defaults conflict with stricter warning-to-error promotion introduced in GCC 14 and inherited by GCC 15)"— the 6.1 vendor tree fails to compile on Ubuntu 24.04+ / Debian Trixie+ hosts due to -Werror promotion. Fix is KCFLAGS=-Wno-error for the kernel proper plus sed-stripping hardcoded -Werror from libbpf, libsubcmd, objtool, and libperf tool Makefiles. Without this, you can't rebuild Joshua's kernel from source on a modern host.
- Tested as a daily driver on OPi 5B hardware with reboot loop test, cpu burn. running 4k screensaver.

Known limitations (carried over from upstream):
- Mali GPU PPA (panfork-mesa) and jjriek/rockchip userspace PPAs are no longer maintained. Frozen at the versions Joshua left them.

Not a competitor to Armbian — different scope, different kernel approach. If you're getting clean results with Armbian on your 5B, stick with what works. This is for the case where Armbian's mainline kernel breaks onboard hardware or you specifically need the Joshua-Riek tree.

Credit: this is a continuation, not original work. Joshua-Riek did the heavy lifting; LICENSE, NOTICE, and README all credit upstream.

Repo:    https://github.com/defcom5-rockchip/ubuntu-rockchip
Kernel:  https://github.com/defcom5-rockchip/linux-rockchip-rk3588
Release: https://github.com/defcom5-rockchip/ubuntu-rockchip/releases/tag/defcom5-v1.0.0 (1.86GB .img.xz + sha256)

 

 

Peace,

defcom5