Skip to content

Linux for ARM development boards

Welcome to the Armbian Documentation!

What is Armbian?

Armbian is a highly optimized base operating system specialized for single board computers. It embodies extremely lightweight hardware features with well-known and supported Debian-based user-space experience, 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

  • lean and standard Debian or Ubuntu based user space with well known APT package manager
  • independent kernel development and maintenance with long term support
  • extensive build framework with fast hybrid assembly of whole operating system and endless capabilities
  • advanced hardware and OS config and software installation with built-in armbian-config
  • daily automated stress and upgrade testing on key hardware targets
  • exclusive support of exotic hardware nobody else supports
  • stabilized point and rolling distribution of upgrades and OS images
  • world wide download infrastructure with perfect coverage also in China mainland
  • extensive build infrastructure to assist CI automation
  • strong ties to embedded Linux.

Comparison

Distributions Armbian Downstream Upstream
Primary focus making a value sales, profiting making a value
User-space clean & minimal bloated with proprietary scripts clean
Experience across hardware universal, predictable, reproducible random, chaotic, manually assembled porting, unofficial builds
Contributing to FOSS extreme close to none great
System config universal proprietary all / none
Maintenance modular with review and unit tests endless spaghetti code traditional and modern
Build framework advanced and user friendly none none
Hardware maintainers 50+, teams per SoC, per vendor none none
Upstream contribution 1000+ none little
Downstream projects 10+ none 100+
Switching to upstream easy impossible /
User-space changes standard proprietary standard
Initial memory usage optimal bad bad
Process usage optimal only hidden too broad
Pre-installed packages optimized for fast install makes install of anything slower optimized for fast install
Declaring support where we know maintainers everything is “supported” everything is “supported”
Other features and performance tweaks worth mentioning
  • Images are highly compressed 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
  • Login MOTD shows collection of important information
  • /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 zswap
  • /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 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