As the Armbian project transitions from spring into summer, the final week of May 2025 brought a dense flurry of development activity, delivering improvements across kernel support, bootloader updates, system performance, and user experience enhancements. With over 35 pull requests merged, this week showcased the Armbian community’s continued dedication to modernizing and stabilizing its build framework and board support packages.

Performance & Build System Optimizations

A notable performance enhancement arrived via #8248, where build engineer @rpardini delivered a major speed-up in Docker extension handling, cutting processing time by over 50%. Complementing this, PR #8249 addressed inefficiencies in rootfs-to-image by avoiding --sparse, significantly improving I/O speeds on various filesystems.

Kernel version parsing and custom kernel description functionality also landed with #8152, thanks to @Grippy98, enabling displaying kernel versioning within build branches.

Board Support Enhancements & Bootloader Upgrades

A slew of boards received attention this week. The NanoPC-T6 series saw a key modernization in #8219 and #8239, switching to mainline Arm Trusted Firmware and bumping U-Boot to v2025.04 final. The Quartz64A board followed suit in #8250, while the Odroid HC4, Khadas VIM3, and Mixtile Blade3 all received U-Boot updates or reverts to improve stability.

Legacy and edge kernel support was also improved. Notably, Rockchip64 edge kernel configuration gained CONFIG_NETKIT=y (#8237), and fixes for display mode handling on RK3588 boards were added (#8253).

Meanwhile, the Orangepi 5 Ultra switched to a mainline kernel source (#8252), reinforcing Armbian’s ongoing effort to shed legacy components and embrace upstream compatibility.

Infrastructure & Usability Improvements

Behind the scenes, @igorpecovnik contributed multiple usability tweaks, including a fix for HiDPI detection (#8236) and @rpardini added improved serial console fallback behavior in GRUB (#8247). The GPG key placement was standardized across distros (#8128), simplifying build reproducibility.

Device Tree and Service Fixes

The smart am40 received a long-needed RTC node and U-Boot bump (#8214), while the Helios4‘s wake-on-LAN service was fixed (#8235), reinforcing Armbian’s commitment to community-requested board maintenance.

Wrapping Up

This week’s burst of activity highlights the Armbian community’s tireless commitment to refinement and modernization. Whether through performance enhancements, kernel bumps, or quality-of-life fixes, the project continues to evolve rapidly. Users can expect a more responsive, stable, and future-proof experience across a growing roster of supported hardware.

Stay tuned for further updates as June unfolds.