Hi all,

I've been running the official Orange Pi 1.0.2 Jammy image (grabbed from their drive) since 2023, and I just realized I'm stuck on a 5.10.110 kernel with no real update path.

Joshua-Riek/ubuntu-rockchip looked like a great alternative, but it's archived now, so Armbian is my default plan.

I've browsed a bunch of threads here about eMMC installs on the 5B being finicky, so before I dive in I'd rather ask around first.

Questions:

• Which Armbian image/branch/version do you run day to day on a 5B, and would you recommend it for a server?
• Is there a complete, up-to-date install guide for eMMC on the 5B specifically?
• Do I need to go through an older/intermediate image first, or can I flash straight to eMMC from a fresh current release?
• I don't currently have a spare SD card, and most threads I've seen use one as part of the process. Do I need to pick one up to be safe, or is a direct-to-eMMC flash reliable enough on its own?

Thanks in advance!

Hi Haxce, Direct to eMMC from a fresh current release is fine — you do not need an intermediate image. The 5B installs are "finicky" mostly because of one thing that is not the eMMC itself: the SPI flash. If the board ever carried an older image, the SPI likely holds an old U-Boot that takes precedence in the boot order and hangs before your new install even gets touched. The reliable sequence is: boot the Armbian image from a friend's SD card just once, run armbian-install (nand-sata-install) to write the system to eMMC, then wipe the SPI bootloader so the only U-Boot on the board is the one armbian-install just wrote. After that, power off, remove the card, done.
On branch choice for a server that has to last: vendor (6.1 BSP) is the feature-complete one — good if you need MPP video, NPU, camera. Current/edge is mainline and gets the security fixes continuously, which matters more for a box that sits on a network for years. For a headless server doing storage and services I'd take current. If you want the same image line to still be around in three years, that's exactly the reason we moved our industrial boards off vendor BSP years ago — vendor branches freeze and then die, mainline keeps moving.
You can even skip the SD card: rkdeveloptool in MASKROM mode flashes eMMC directly from a PC over USB-C. Just don't touch SPI from there unless you know why.