I want to install debian or armbian or what ever it is for Orange Pi One to be a server. I downloaded Jessie server from here: http://www.armbian.com/orange-pi-one/and extracted the 7z file. I do now know what to do with the raw-files I extracted.

 

At first I tried to install install basic Debian from here: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=342&extra=page%3D1

but I didn't undestand the instructions after mounting SD Card FAT partition. I'm not even sure am I suppose to mount it to Orange Pi or the PC I used to write the image to th SD. So I went looking for another way and found the first mentioned which was seemed to be made for the One model so I thought to try it by here I am asking for help.

You need to write the Armbian raw files to SD. If using Linux you can use the dd command, on Windows you can use Rufus as explained here

 

The debian and every image from OPi forums can be used with the same tools, but I won't use it as they are not mantained anymore and they are full of bugs (overheating, wrong voltages and such)

Okay, thanks for the reply. I did download Rufus but I didn't see straight away how to write the raw files with it. So there's only legacy release for Orange Pi One and that page says that Vanilla is better for headless server, yet the legacy release is named Jessie server. I find this rather confusing. Is it good for own small server activity or not?

 

EDIT: There seems only be mention that Rufus can write raw files but no tutorial or such on how to do it. I'm assuming that I create bootable disk using DD image and select the larger file with only the raw extension and not the asc file. I'm just assuming it's DD because that's the name of the app for linux and mac. I just want to confirm for if I am to select raw file with that then I have to search for All files and not the default option containing img, vhd, gz, bzip2, xz, lzma, Z and zip.

I have never used Windows to write images, so I can't help with Rufus.

 

The prebuilt image available to OPI is legacy because it uses the legacy kernel (3.4.X from linux-sunxi project) instead of the vanilla kernel. Anyway it uses Debian Jessie like vanilla release. It will work fine for your purposes.

Thanks. At least it boots alright after writing with the settings above. If writing with mac/linux do you use the asc file for anything?

Te asc file is a PGP signature used to verify the image authenticity, you don't need to use it for anything else.