Armbian launched in May their latest Linux distribution “Armbian 23.05 Suni” with various updates for the Debian community. Similarly, DietPi v8.18 has provided enhancements for the Quartz64 SBC and PiHole support for the RISC-V architecture.

Armbian:

Armbian is an open-source OS based on Linux designed specifically for ARM-based single-board computers (SBCs). It provides a lightweight and customizable environment for SBCs, allowing users to run various applications and services on devices such as the Raspberry Pi, Orange Pi, etc. Refer to the Armbian GitHub to see what devices are supported. 

Armbian mentioned to share the following news with the readers:

Improvements and enhancements:

We are pleased to announce several improvements and enhancements at the user level:

• Armbian Bookworm based images: We are introducing Armbian Bookworm-based images, providing the latest features and updates from the Debian community.
• i3 supported: i3 has been added as the fourth officially supported desktop environment, expanding the options available to our users.
• Fixes and Enhancements: We have addressed issues in key tools such as armbian-installer, armbian-config, and armbian-firstrun, ensuring a smoother user experience.
• Streamlined Packages: We have optimized our package base, making it nearly identical across different underlying package bases and desktop choices. This standardization improves predictability and enhances security.
• Consistent Application Packages: Regardless of the chosen package base or desktop environment, the application packages remain the same. This ensures consistent functionality and ease of use.
• Improved Ubuntu-Based Assemblies: We have successfully removed the unnecessary “Ubuntu advantage” services from our Ubuntu-based assemblies, as they do not provide any advantages in this specific hardware segment. Internet browsers are installed without snap technology, and we directly host many 3rd party applications in our repositories.
• Fast and Safe Updates: Our streamlined system allows for fast and safe updates, ensuring that users can easily stay up to date with the latest improvements and security patches.

* Detailed release log

Gaming:

Armbian is also gaming-friendly. Thanks to the community-maintained script, armbian-gaming, you can easily turn your ordinary Linux device into a gaming platform. You’ll have the opportunity to play games specifically developed for x86 architecture using Wine. The emulation feature works seamlessly on both 32-bit and 64-bit hardware. Additionally, Armbian provides support for popular gaming platforms such as Steam, PlayStation, Android emulation, and even PS2 games. Get ready for an immersive gaming experience on your Armbian-powered system!

These enhancements aim to provide a seamless, secure and fun user experience, further establishing Armbian as a reliable choice for single board computer users!

DietPi:

On the other hand, DietPi is a lightweight and optimized OS based on Linux, specifically designed for single-board computers and small-scale devices. It aims to provide a minimal and efficient environment for running various applications and services while consuming minimal system resources.

These are the June updates for DietPi v8.18 :

 Enhancements:

• Quartz64 Enabled (software) RAID and Logical Volume Manager (LVM) support. 
• DietPi-Software | youtube-dl Since the development of the original youtube-dl project stalled for some years, we migrated to the well known actively developed fork yt-dlp: yt-dlp/yt-dlp
  If you installed youtube-dl before, you can migrate via reinstall: dietpi-software reinstall 195. For backwards compatibility, the youtube-dl command will stay valid as a symlink to yt-dlp, but there are some differences you should be aware about when doing the migration on your system: yt-dlp/yt-dlp#differences-in-default-behavior.
• DietPi-Software | Pi-hole With recent release, Pi-hole supports RISC-V and has been hence enabled for this architecture as well in DietPi. Many thanks to the Pi-hole team for making this possible quickly!

Bug fixes:

• DietPi-DDNS Resolved an issue where the IP sync failed because the API URL changed recently.
• DietPi-Software | Restic Resolved an issue where Restic was installed without an executable flag. 
• DietPi-Software | Domoticz Resolved an issue where the installation failed when trying to unpack the tarball. 
• DietPi-Software | Domoticz Resolved an issue where the service start failed because the new version of Domoticz depends on the GnuTLS variant of libcurl instead of the OpenSSL one. 
• DietPi-Software | motionEye Resolved an issue where the installation failed on ARMv6, ARMv7 and RISC-V Bookworm systems due to missing build dependencies. 
• DietPi-Software | LXQt Resolved an issue on Bookworm systems where the install failed since configs were missing.
• DietPi-Software | TigerVNC Resolved an issue on Bookworm systems where the VNC password was not set as expected since the tigervncpasswd command became a dedicated DEB package tigervnc-tools.
• DietPi-Software | Deluge Resolved an issue on Bookworm systems where the install failed when trying to alter the service user.
• DietPi-Software | Mosquitto Resolved an issue on Bookworm systems where the install failed. The official APT repository does not provide a Bookworm suite yet, and the Bullseye packages have Bullseye-only dependencies. On Bookworm the Debian repo packages will be installed instead now.

Further information

For more information refer to the Armbian and the DietPi official websites.