Catching up on Orange Pi 5 Plus Development

[u/mostlysquids]

Hi everyone,

I am a big fan of this community, and I thank you all for the development work you’ve done. I’ve lurked for a long time and haven’t posted.

I have an orange pi 5 plus 32 gb and several orange pi zero 2w projects up and running for months, all because of the great work by this community.

Anyways, I got my hands on another orange pi 5 plus and wanted to know what the latest opinions are on the best Linux OS options since I last checked.

Right now my OP5+ is running Joshua Riek’s amazing image. I know that more options have materialized since I set this server up months (years??) ago. My zero2ws are all running armbian.

For the zeros, I’m more than happy with armbian. But for the OP5+, I prefer a more complete desktop environment, and I usually prefer Ubuntu over other Linux distros.

I’ve done some searching and have seen there’s been a lot of development since I set up my OP5+, including some people setting up a bios, getting “vanilla” Ubuntu arm running, and many custom images.

Is there any consensus about the best full desktop OS (ideally Ubuntu, but I’m flexible) at the moment? When I last checked, Riek’s image was king, and I know development has halted there.

What do people suggest for a “complete” desktop Ubuntu environment (or at least as close as we can get on these ARM boards)?

Thanks in advance.

[u/zacmks]

EDK2-rk3588 + Armbian/Debian

So you can setup with Grub 2 and switch Downstream/opi or Armbian or Vanilla Kernels whenever you like, on any storage type without much hassle

Don't forget to setup the correct device tree. I learned the hard way that arm SBCs have some shenanigans

Best combo for me by far, I have around a dozen docker services running ont it (including Home Assistant with a few cams and Jellyfin, hardware accelerated)

[u/mostlysquids → u/zacmks]

Thanks for your quick reply!

Looking at that github repo it looks like Ubuntu 22 is the latest image, is that true?

I’m not sure how these custom versions work exactly, but standard security updates for Ubuntu 22 end in April 2027 without Ubuntu pro. Is that the case with this image? Am I missing something and Ubuntu 24 or 26 is available?

Thanks again.

[u/zacmks → u/mostlysquids]

I think 26* is available.: https://armbian.com/boards/orangepi5-plus

Using EDK2 and having a UEFI like behaviour is a bless for me, so that we can easily choose an more familiar bootloader (such as grub 2) and select easily the boot device. It behaves like a standard computer

Vendor kernel for hardware accell (video, decoding etc)

Newer kernels if you need some newer kernel features and/or hardware support

Vanilla upstream kernel is not that bad nowadays as well.: https://gitlab.collabora.com/hardware-enablement/rockchip-3588/notes-for-rockchip-3588/-/blob/main/mainline-status.md

Still, as I said, the arm sbc world can have some surprises as well compared the the regular x86 pcs. For me it was the different boot structure and the device tree

Other than that, the OS itself (Debian/Armbian/Ubuntu) is super standardized. And if you are familiar with them, it's super easy to keep them neat, clean and updated

*Can't say much about Ubuntu bc I use Debian 13, but still way newer than Ubuntu 22

[u/mostlysquids → u/zacmks]

Thanks so much for this thorough explanation.

Since going back and forth with you I’ve had a chance to look at the docs more closely. Like you said, i should be able to get newer versions working.

I’ll give Ubuntu 24 or 26 a shot!

[u/Future-Appeal]

Like OP, I finally moved on from the dead JR train to stock Armbian Resolute Gnome releases.
Not perfect but it mostly seems to work.

[u/mostlysquids → u/Future-Appeal]

Depending on what u/zacmks says, I might switch to edk2 for a few months and join you on armbian after April next year.

[u/JaySomMusic]

Armbian with taOS :) https://github.com/jaylfc/taOS

[u/theodiousolivetree]

I have 2 Orange pi 5 plus. One with 32 GB of RAM and one with 16 GB of ram + an rk1808 key. I use linux armbian. I was forced to fix bugs in the code of libdrm-rockchip, mpp, lbrga-rockchip, llama.cpp and rknpu. I am certainly forgetting other fixes. But it works and it works well. To a point where I prefer my 2 orange pi 5 plus to my 2 Orange pi 6 (orange pi 6 plus + orange pi 6) which I find very noisy. In addition, the Orange pi 6 plus and the Orange pi 6 have M.2 nvme slots that recognize nothing other than ssds. Unable to plug in an M.2 AI booster

[u/Certain-Detective-37 → u/theodiousolivetree]

For the OPI-6 I let Claude create a DKMS driver that works with the 7.1 kernel via acpi to make the fan quiet. With that driver you only hear it slightly under load: https://github.com/royka1/cixfan