Please choose the best reason for selecting Armbian and using an ARM SBC not manufactured by the Raspberry Pi Foundation

Because Armbian is not a brand or a product but RPI or raspbian are (with all the drawbacks it implies).

 

(And when people who try to impose their solutions on linux will eventually finish it, I will buy a MAC)

@arox - interesting perspective, so you think that the RPF is actually having a destructive influence on Linux because of its customization/branding/selling? I feel the opposite because they've increased awareness dramatically and legitimized embedded boards running a "friendly" and universal operating system. I don't think Raspbian's customizations affect mainline Linux a whole lot, but there are nearly 10 million new Linux users because of them.

Every company/organisation/fundation that become a major actor and try to get some "part of market" have a destructive influence on linux. Its true for the major distributions, and many others.

 

I first bought a Banana PI because the RPF was unable to provide something like a 2D accelerated video driver. I installed armbian because Sonovoip was anable to provide a decent OS. I will never buy a RPI anymore because they designed and avertised a product (RPI zero) they dont want to sell and you cannot acquire. I dont buy "toys". An integration project with a SoC consumes hundreds of hours. I need a whole bunch of cards to deploy the project and get spares.

 

Any company that sell boards on a one per client basis with extravagant shipping fees are morons.

I use Armbian because it's very close to the original Debian and I feel at home using it, also there is some good effort to support a growing number of processors/boards which is really good also because we have a common system to test against, not to mention the forum which is among my favorite reads in the morning at the local cafe Now if I really had to find something I don't like about Armbian, that would be some more recent boards which seem supported only by the Ubuntu-flavored Armbian.

ps- arox, I share pretty much your same opinion on the RPF, especially the whole RPi-Zero thing, that's why I use RPis only for media players and other boards for everything else.

 

4 hours ago, squarefoot said:

I use Armbian because it's very close to the original Debian and I feel at home using it, also there is some good effort to support a growing number of processors/boards

I like armbian also because it feels (and is while using debian stretch) like debian or any other real linux.
I dont like these "small" systems whcih only support OpenWRT because it seems either that I cant handle OpenWRT or OpenWRT is very instable.

armbian/debian is for server type systems and mostly doesnt need the multimedia (video) of a raspberry pi.

 

When I was young I dreamed about a computer with multiple systems (like in the AMIGA for every work another chip) and now you can make this true with a $10 board and armbian  and without many  fans in the system and no high power level = no noise

> I dont like these "small" systems whcih only support OpenWRT

 

Most small systems support only OpenWRT due to lack of resources; OpenWRT was born as an alternative open OS for Linksys home/SOHO access points and similar hardware with a fraction of the resources our SBC boards can count on today. Armbian installation on that class of devices would be impossible.

 

> armbian/debian is for server type systems and mostly doesnt need the multimedia (video) of a raspberry pi.

 

I'd say it's a complete dress one can cut to the desired length while OpenWRT is a nice pair of shorts full of pockets packed with tools:)

 

Regarding multimedia, one of my goals with small boards such as NanoPIs and Orange PIs etc. would rather be the feasibility of the video output to be used in instruments to show data, waveforms etc with decent speed. That should require only 2D acceleration with no codecs involved.

 

 

I first came to Armbian because I wanted a board that the RPF couldn't supply, namely a 5 port gigabit router type board to replace an aging DD-WRT router I'd been using.  This lead me to the Banana Pi BPI-R1 and after trying various distro's on it, I ultimately settled on using Armbian. 

 

Now I no longer have that board having retired it for a different system due to performance issues but I continue to buy and use various SBC's and always use Armbian when I can.  It's familiar, fast, and gives me all the features I need without any bloat or preconfigured assumptions on software I should use.  I really like using SBC's in place of gigantic, power-hungry PC systems whenever and wherever I can as they are so much more cost effective to use.  The power savings alone have paid for several Orange Pi systems around my house.  I can mold these tiny computers to fit my will and stash them all over the house to perform any task I see fit!  Mwuhahaha!

I voted "saving money" since noone else did.

 

The leading answer "it's better than most OEM stuff" is certainly true as well.

 

Our beloved el cheapo manufacturer's mode of operation is: throw spaghetti on the wall and see what sticks. Looks to me like the OPi Zero and the NanoPi Neo stuck. At least this years survey from LinuxGizmos has them not completely losing – I guess this is related to the pricing.

 

While a 10 – 20 $ save on a project does not matter that much to me, I feel like those baords are less likely to become abandoned by the community.

1-The quality of the build software is far superior than other distributions. 2-It is not tied to a company. 3-Allows me to develop in different boards with the same OS.

Cost, power, throughput.  I just saw this beastie, could you imagine if it were powered by something even with proper ethernet?

6 hours ago, TonyMac32 said:

 I just saw this beastie, could you imagine if it were powered by something even with proper ethernet?

750 RPI ! Does it have 750 SD Cards and 750 FAT partition ?!?

56 minutes ago, arox said:

750 RPI ! Does it have 750 SD Cards and 750 FAT partition ?!?

I don't know of any other way to boot a VideoCore.

9 minutes ago, TonyMac32 said:

I don't know of any other way to boot a VideoCore.

BCM2837 combined with LAN9514 allows for netbooting, no SD cards needed since early 2016. And since the above Raspberry cluster is there to dig into simulating large scale clustering most probably the use of devices with crappy USB Ethernet is a better choice than using good boards with GbE (since better simulating the scaling)

14 minutes ago, tkaiser said:

BCM2837 combined with LAN9514 allows for netbooting, no SD cards needed since early 2016

 

Now I know.  

Armbian ROCKS in a classroom environment - everyone has their own board and still things work remarkably similar.  There is very little hardware specific stuff a student needs to differentiate from the instructions given. 

 

May not seem like much, but so far we've got 14 kids to use a board other than a RPi and 'learn linux.' (I think a couple of adults secretly use their kids Odroids late at night ...)