[News from Armbian] - Github highlights - July 27th to August 3rd, 2025

This week brings significant kernel updates, security enhancements, and important board-specific improvements.

Highlights

• Kernel 6.16 arrives: A major update to Kernel 6.16 has been rolled out across several platforms, including mainline, UEFI ARM64, and Rockchip edge, bringing the latest features, performance improvements, and bug fixes to a wider range of Armbian devices.
• Enhanced security for BananaPi BPI-M4-Zero: Kernel Address Space Layout Randomization (KASLR) has been enabled, significantly improving the board’s resilience to memory-based attacks.
• U-Boot 2025.07 released: Both BananaPi BPI-M4-Zero and Orange Pi 5 Pro received updated U-Boot firmware, improving eMMC support and platform stability.

New features

• BPI-M4-Zero: Add KASLR Support and re-enable h616 RTC patches on current
• Sunxi64: Enable more I2C, IIO, SENSORS and other misc bits

Bug fixes

• Fix NanoPi R6S udev network mapping
• OrangePi 5 Pro: Fix incorrect GRF node name in DTS
• Minor spelling mistakes

Improvements

• Mainline kernel: Bump to 6.16 release
• UEFI ARM64: Bump to 6.16
• Rockchip Edge: Updated to kernel 6.16
• Odroid XU4: Updated to 6.6.100
• BPI-M4-Zero: Add default overlay for WiFi/BT
• BPI-M4-Zero: Update DTS and U-Boot to v2025.07
• OrangePi 5 Pro: U-Boot v2025.07 with eMMC support
• Avoid copying id_ecdsa when not needed
• Debian: Remove obsolete security repo from package list
• Bullseye: Drop non-existent backports repo

Community contributors

@pyavitz @amazingfate @leggewie @gbrdead @igorpecovnik @belegdol @c127dev @paolosabatino @efectn

Stay tuned for next week's highlights. Want to contribute? Visit the Armbian GitHub repository and get involved!

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