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Debian-based Armbian 20.08 distribution for single-board computers has been released and it’s a massive update that brings support for new devices and many other improvements.
The biggest changes in Armbian 20.08 are around hardware support. This release comes with initial support for the Rockchip RK3328-based Rock Pi E 64-bit single-board computer and the NanoPi NEO3 SBC, support for the Odroid N2+ SBC, support for the Helios64 open source Linux NAS (Network Attached Storage), as well as support for Rockchip RK322X SoCs.
Apart from the newly supported hardware, Armbian 20.08 also improves support for several popular SBCs, including Bananapi R2, which should now boot properly, NanoPi M4V2, which should now offer proper Wi-Fi support, and ODROID XU4, which received a much-needed speed boost, as well as updated kernels and boot.ini.
The list of hardware improvements continues with support for HDMI audio on Orange Pi 4 boards, the ability to install Armbian to SD NAND on Rock Pi S SBCs, support for user provided EDID firmware, HDMI sound support for Allwinner A10, A20 and A31 devices, and support for cheap 2.5GB USB network dongles.
There’s also better support for the Odroid C2 and Rock Pi 4 Model B SBCs, improved support for Allwinner and H3 devices, support for Linux kernel 5.7 for i.MX 6 chips, support for U-Boot 2020.07 and Linux kernel 5.7 on rockchip64 and RK3399 family of SoCs, and support for Linux kernel 5.6 on Marvell ESPRESSObin SBCs.
Starting with version 20.08, Armbian is now capable of working in offline mode, so an Internet connection is no longer needed to use the distribution. This release also makes the first login more user friendly, updates the Tapatalk plugin, unifies the kernel configurations, and adds an option to enable the kernel boot splash.
Lastly, Armbian 20.08 adds the default SElinux policy that was missing from Debian Bullseye, adds new GCC compilers, offers a download page for the Banana Pi BPI-M2 Zero single-board computer, backports some features from Linux kernel 5.8, and fixes CPU frequency scaling on Allwinner H6-based devices.
More details about the changes and bug fixes included in this release can be found in the release announcement. Meanwhile, you can download Armbian 20.08 right now from the official website for more than 100 devices!
Last updated 4 years ago
