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Linux for ARM development boards

Welcome to the Armbian Documentation!

What is Armbian?

Armbian is highly optimized base operating system specialized for single board computers.

It embodies extremely lightweight hardware features focused Debian-based distribution, extensive build framework and is suitable for industrial or home use.

graph LR
  A[Hardware] --> B{50 x Armbian kernel};
  B --> X["point release"];
  X ---->|minimal| E[Debian or Ubuntu];
  X ---->|server| F[Debian or Ubuntu];
  X -->|desktop| H[Debian or Ubuntu];
  H -->Q[XFCE];
  H -->W[Gnome];
  H -->R[KDE];
  H -->T[Cinnamon];

Key Advantages

  • extremly lean and standardised Debian-based user space
  • extensive build framework with endless capabilities
  • fast hybrid assembly of whole operating system
  • independent long term support
  • advanced hardware and OS config (armbian-config)
  • in-house kernel development, improvement and maintenance
  • daily automated stress and upgrade testing on key hardware targets
  • exlusive support of exotic hardware
  • installation is optional and simplified
  • provides point releases and daily rolling distribution
  • world wide download infrastructure with perfect coverage in China mainland
  • 1000+ build runners to assist CI automation
  • CI supports customised build list per each build target
Other features and performance tweaks
  • Images are reduced to actual data size and automatically expand across boot media at first boot
  • BASH or ZSH shell, preinstalled standard system utilities
  • login is possible via serial, HDMI/VGA or SSH
  • highly compressed distributed images
  • Upgrades are done via standard apt upgrade method
  • Login script shows: board name with large text, distribution base, kernel version, system load, uptime, memory usage, IP(v6) address, CPU and drive temperature, ZFS, rootfs usage, battery conditions and number of updates to install
  • /var/log is mounted as compressed device (zram, lzo), log2ram service saves logs to disk daily and on shutdown
  • Half of memory is allocated/extended for/with compressed swap
  • /tmp is mounted as tmpfs (optionally compressed)
  • Browser profile memory caching is enabled on desktop images
  • Optimized IO scheduler (check /etc/init.d/armhwinfo)
  • Journal data writeback enabled. (/etc/fstab)
  • ethernet interrupts are using dedicated core

What is supported?

Armbian distributes stable images for maintained hardware through its own mirror network.
Supported / maintained is not a guarantee. It implies a particular SBC is at a high level of software maturity and has a named maintainer. Due to the complexity and lack of cooperation in the ecosystem it is unlikely that all specialized functionalities (like 3D, VE, I²C…) are always available.

Support status

Platinum Support

At least one person providing maintainance and support.

Standard Support

Support is not secured but still good anything from this list.

Community maintained

Most of those will also work, but no warranty as Armbian does not monitor their status.

For more information is see the Board Support Guide

Getting started

If you are new to Armbian, the Getting Started section provides a tutorial for everything you need to know to get Armbian running. It then continues on to more advanced topics.

If you need help and have read through Getting Started check out Troubleshooting.

If you still cannot find what you need here visit the Armbian forum where your input can help to improve this documentation.

Software titles

You can quickly and easily install popular software! They are ready to run and optimized for Armbian. Here are few highlights:

  • Desktops - install desktop environments
  • Netconfig - network tools
  • DevTools - development
  • Benchy - system benchmaking and diagnostics
  • Containers - containerization and virtual machines
  • Media - media servers and editors
  • Management - remote management tools
Unit testing

All software targets and functions are automatically tested to catch as many problems as possible.

GitHub Workflow Status