Armbian, a lightweight Linux distro optimized for ARM-based single-board computers, has announced the release of version 25.11, delivering broader hardware coverage.
Several boards are moving away from vendor-specific bootloaders toward mainline U-Boot and a cleaner, more maintainable software stack. Hardware support expands with boards from multiple vendors joining the release.
Newly supported devices include Texas Instruments’ AM62P Starter Kit and AM62L EVM, FriendlyElec’s NanoPi R76S and NanoPi M5, and several Radxa systems, including the ROCK 4D, CM4 IO Board, E54C, and Dragon Q6A. Additional entries include ArmSoM Forge1, Banana Pi M5 Pro, the Mekotronics R58 series, XpressReal T3, 9Tripod X3568 v4, a range of LuckFox RV1103/RV1106 variants, and Hardkernel’s ODROID M1S.
On the user-space side, Armbian adds Debian Forky, Ubuntu 25.10, and Ubuntu 26.04 as new Community Supported build targets. The build framework receives multiple internal upgrades, including the adoption of mmdebstrap for faster and more reliable root filesystem generation.
On top of that, kernel configuration maintenance is now streamlined through automated rewrites designed to reduce conflicts and keep configs aligned with upstream changes.
Build performance improves through the separation of kernel build and installation steps, enabling more efficient caching. A new release-log generator now covers the entire Armbian GitHub organization, improving transparency across projects.
The release also introduces the lowmem extension for devices with less than 256 MB of RAM and adds support for injecting user-defined first-boot configuration during the build process. Additional improvements include more resilient keyring handling, improved mirror fallback logic, and an inventory-artifacts CLI to improve traceability within the build pipeline.
For more information, see the announcement or refer to the full changelog.
