Initially, it was named Raspbian, for the Raspbian project on which it is based. Raspberry Pi OS is the official operating system of the Raspberry Pi Foundation for their SBCs. Cubian, a fork of Debian GNU/Linux for the Cubieboard, seems no longer to be maintained, as the last release dates back to 2014. From the project website, you can download distribution images for the Orange Pi, the Cubieboard ,Īnd the Asus Tinkerboard, among other images. Moreover, while the Debian GNU/Linux distribution supports a variety of hardware architectures, including ARM7 (32 bit) and ARM8, the Armbian distribution focuses only on a wide range of ARM-based development boards. ‘Armbian’ is an artificial word that combines the words ‘ARM,’ for the corresponding RISC processor architecture, and the last two syllables, ‘bian,’ from ‘Debian.’ This makes it very clear what sets Armbian apart from Debian GNU/Linux unlike Debian, Armbian is focused and optimized for the ARM architecture. These devices are run with specially adapted Linux or BSD distributions, of which Armbian and RaspberryPi OS are only two representatives of many. You can find these devices everywhere - in wifi routers, weather stations, home automation devices, and fine dust measuring instruments. Today, it is impossible to imagine everyday existence without these powerful mini-computers. Back then, anyone with knowledge about devices like the RouterBOARD from Mikrotik or the ALIX Board from PC Engines was seen as exotic. In 2012, Raspberry Pi popularized the single-board computers (SBC) class for the general public.

Many programmers may have the same question: Is Armbian just another flavor of Debian GNU/Linux, or is it something completely different? What are the differences between Raspberry Pi OS, Armbian, and Debian? In this article, we will discuss the Armbian, Debian, and Raspberry Pi operating systems in detail, including a comparison between these different systems.

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