Armbian 25.11 brings mainline U-Boot to more boards, expands hardware support, and more

Armbian 25.11 is now available, targeting custom ARM, RISC-V, and Intel or AMD single-board computers. This release expands hardware support to new boards from a variety of vendors, including Texas Instruments, FriendlyElec, Radxa, ArmSoM, Banana Pi, Mekotronics, XpressReal, 9Tripod, LuckFox, and Hardkernel. While these additions strengthen compatibility for device manufacturers and tinkerers alike, several boards are also transitioning from vendor-specific bootloaders to mainline U-Boot, leading to a cleaner, more maintainable software stack and streamlined updates.

On the operating system front, community-supported targets now span Debian Forky, Ubuntu 25.10, and the upcoming Ubuntu 26.04. Building on this foundation, the release introduces mmdebstrap throughout the build framework, enabling faster and more reliable root filesystem creation. Coupled with a kernel configuration rewrite automation, this change reduces conflicts and, together with splitting kernel build and installation steps, also improves caching for shorter build times.

Addressing resource constraints, the new lowmem extension offers improved support for devices with less than 256 MB of RAM. Users can now inject first-boot configuration at build time, simplifying deployment. Finally, a dedicated inventory-artifacts command line interface enhances build traceability, while more robust keyring and mirror fetching routines increase overall reliability of the development process.