Armbian adds 10+ boards, U-Boot v2026.10 refresh, Rockchip SATA and wireless fixes

Armbian has published its latest GitHub highlights covering substantial expansion of single-board computer support and core infrastructure updates. The project added enablement for more than ten new boards across multiple SoC families, including the EasePi R1 and Pine64 Quartz64 Zero on Rockchip RK3568, the ArmSoM CM7s IO board and Boardcon EM3588 on RK3588, the Forlinx OK3572-C, and the Skysi X5 laptop. The Banana Pi BPI-M4 with Realtek RTD1395 and the legacy Cubieboard 4 with Allwinner A80 returned with full cpufreq, thermal, HDMI, and audio support. Qualcomm and NVIDIA coverage also expanded with initial Lenovo Legion Y700 Gen 4 support on SM8750 and Jetson Nano integration into the uefi-arm64-dt target.

A coordinated bootloader refresh moved numerous existing platforms to U-Boot v2026.10, Arm Trusted Firmware-A lts-v2.14.11, and updated DDR blobs. This sweep covered Radxa RK3399, RockPro64, Rock Pi 4C, NanoPi M4, multiple Orange Pi 4 variants, Tinker Board 2, Mixtile Blade3 and Edge2, and the Recomputer RK3588 devkit. The build framework now uses git.u-boot-project.org as its upstream host, and GRUB images gained separate ext2/ext4 /boot partitions with proper UEFISIZE handling. Kernel-level improvements include working 6 Gbps SoC SATA and CAN node support for RK3588, HDMI clock fixes for RK356x and RK3576, WPA3/SAE handling in bcmdhd, and backported rtw88 support for rtl8723bs wireless.

Bootloader, kernel, and media subsystem changes

• U-Boot v2026.10 migration: Platforms including Radxa RK3399, RockPro64, Rock Pi 4C, NanoPi M4, Orange Pi 4 variants, Tinker Board 2, Mixtile Blade3, Mixtile Edge2, and Recomputer RK3588 devkit moved to U-Boot v2026.10 with TF-A lts-v2.14.11 and refreshed DDR blobs.
• GRUB and build infrastructure: GRUB images now use a separate ext2/ext4 /boot partition and honor the UEFISIZE parameter; the build framework switched its upstream U-Boot mirror to git.u-boot-project.org.
• RK3588 storage and networking: The RK3588 SoC gained working 6 Gbps SoC SATA support and CAN node support in the device tree and kernel configuration.
• Rockchip HDMI and audio fixes: HDMI on RK356x received a 31.5 MHz clock fix, and RK3576 gained a 16-bit audio correction; the dw_hdmi driver now skips PHY debugfs when no PHY is present.
• Wireless and media updates: bcmdhd gained WPA3/SAE handling; rtw88 backport added rtl8723bs support via rtw8723b_fw.bin firmware; Amlogic meson64 VDEC received fixes for H.264, MPEG-1/2, and GStreamer/FFmpeg start failures; Sophgo SG2000 gained H.264 encoder and JPEG unit support in coda.

Why it matters

For Linux distribution maintainers and embedded developers, this Armbian cycle reduces fragmentation in bootloader maintenance by consolidating multiple Rockchip and Allwinner platforms on a single U-Boot release, while the GRUB partition changes improve UEFI compatibility for arm64 desktop-like deployments. The breadth of new board support from low-cost RK3568 devices through the premium SM8750-based Lenovo tablet demonstrates Armbian's continued role as the de facto standard for community-driven ARM and RISC-V SBC Linux enablement, directly lowering the barrier for hardware vendors to ship mainline-capable products without proprietary vendor kernels.