linux for ARM development boards

Welcome to the Armbian Documentation!

If you’re new to Armbian, the Getting Started section provides a tutorial for everything you need to get Armbian running, and answers many Frequently Asked Questions. It then continues on to more advanced topics.

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

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

What is Armbian?

  • Lightweight Debian or Ubuntu based distribution specialized for ARM developing boards. Compiled from scratch,
  • It has powerful build and software development tools,
  • A vibrant community.

Supported chips

  • Allwinner A10, A20, A31, H2+, H3, H5, A64
  • Amlogic S805 and S905 (Odroid boards), S802/S812, S805, S905, S905X and S912 (fork by @balbes150)
  • Actionsemi S500
  • Freescale / NXP iMx6
  • Marvell Armada A380
  • Rockchip RK3288
  • Samsung Exynos 5422

Supported boards

Beelink X2, Orange Pi PC plus, Orange Pi Plus 2E, Orange Pi Lite, Roseapple Pi, NanoPi M1, NanoPi M1+, NanoPi Neo, NanoPi Neo2, NanoPi Duo, Le Potato, Espressobin, Pine64, soPine64, Pinebook A64, pcDuino2, pcDuino3, Odroid C0/C1/C1+, Banana Pi M2+, Hummingboard 2, Odroid C2, Orange Pi 2, Orange Pi One, Orange Pi PC, Orange Pi PC2, Orange Pi Prime, Orange Pi Win, Orange Pi Plus 1 & 2, Clearfog, Lemaker Guitar, Odroid XU4, Odroid HC1, Udoo Neo, Banana Pi M2, Orange Pi A31S, Cubieboard 1, Cubieboard 2, Hummingboard, Lamobo R1, Banana Pi PRO, Orange Pi mini A20, Olimex Lime A10, Olimex Micro, Olimex Lime 2, pcDuino3 nano, Banana Pi Plus A20, Udoo quad, Orange Pi A20, Olimex Lime 1, Banana Pi, Cubox-i, Cubietruck, Tinker Board, Miqi, Rock64

Check download page for recently supported list.

Common features

  • Debian or Ubuntu based. Compiled from scratch,
  • Install images are reduced to actual data size and resized at first boot,
  • Root password is 1234. You are forced to change this password and create a normal user at first login,
  • Ethernet adapter with DHCP and SSH server ready on default port (22)
  • Wireless adapter with DHCP ready if present but disabled. You can use armbian-config to connect to your router or create AP
  • NAND, SATA, eMMC and USB install script is included (nand-sata-install)
  • Upgrades are done via standard apt-get upgrade method
  • Login script shows: board name with large text, distribution base, kernel version, system load, up time, memory usage, IP address, CPU temp, drive temp, ambient temp from Temper if exits, SD card usage, battery conditions and number of updates to install.

Performance tweaks

  • /tmp and /var/log are mounted as tmpfs, log2ram service saves logs to disk daily and on shutdown
  • browser profile memory caching
  • optimized IO scheduler. (check /etc/init.d/armhwinfo)
  • journal data writeback enabled. (/etc/fstab)
  • commit=600 to flush data to the disk every 10 minutes (/etc/fstab)
  • optimized CPU frequency scaling with interactive governor (/etc/init.d/cpufrequtils)
    • 480-1010Mhz @Allwinner A10/A20
    • 480-1260Mhz @Allwinner H3
    • 392-996Mhz @Freescale imx
    • 600-2000Mhz @Exynos & S905
  • eth0 interrupts are using dedicated core (Allwinner based boards)

Get Involved!