Dear Armbians,

Armbian point releases are times when our entire team works diligently to stabilize our highly complex ecosystem. We understand that, despite our best efforts, there will always be some issues that may not work perfectly. We estimate that resolving bugs and adding new features for each release takes thousands of hours to be completed. This is what the Armbian and its community contributes on top of the vanilla Linux code, which is aggregated at common points, usually referred to as mainline. The code, contributed by many individuals, is intended to be stable. However, given the complexity of the Linux kernel and its maintenance by a diverse group of people, there are no uniform standards, and code quality can vary. Nevertheless, it remains the best we have.

Stay Updated with Nightly Builds

We are not far from the previous point release, and if you wish to stay updated with daily changes, you are welcome to do so. To switch to nightly automated builds, follow these steps:

1. Run sudo armbian-config
2. Select System and then, Nightly

   
Please note that this is not recommended for production environments, as these builds are not thoroughly tested. However, in most cases, they should work well. Before making this switch, we recommend checking our automated tests. If they are passing, you should be in a good position. Some features might still have issues, and we encourage you to engage with our developer community to help resolve them. Our team is too small and will always remain too small to address all issues alone, we can’t fix problems arising from the contributions of thousands of people. Only with your assistance we can achieve this. If you require a specific feature to work or if you want to take some of our burden away, consider sponsoring our developers, who are professionals dedicated to this work.

Switch to Recent Kernel Versions

If nightly builds are not sufficiently current for you, you can switch even further – to the most recent kernel versions. This option is only for those willing to take risks:

1. Run sudo armbian-config
2. Select System and then, Other

      

This will provide options for kernels that you can switch to for your hardware. For example, most hardware in the previous release came with kernel v6.6, and here you will be able to roll back to the previous 6.1 or try the most recent 6.9.y / 6.10.y.

Please be aware that you are entering a bleeding-edge area where stability may be compromised, but you might find that everything works well. Happy hacking!

Best Regards,

The Armbian team