How to install Armbian on Orange Pi Plus 2e

bian on Orange Pi Plus 2e

How to install Armbian on Orange Pi Plus 2e

Armbian on the microSD

You just got your own Orange Pi and you want to start developing your ideas. But before that, you need an operating system. In this post I will show how to install Armbian on the Orange Pi. Armbian is a Debian based operating system which targets the ARM architecture.

For the installation you will need:

• an Orange Pi Plus 2e
• 5V 2A charger
• HDMI cable
• microSD card, 4GB or higher
• USB microSD card adapter (if your computer doesn’t have one)
• keyboard (and mouse)
• a software that is able to create a bootable SD card, like Rufus
• image for the Orange Pi Plus 2e

First of all, go to the Armbian homepage and download the image corresponding to the development board that you have. Choose the Orange Pi Plus 2e and the Jessie desktop version.While Armbian is downloading, get Rufus  and insert a microSD card in you computer.

Once the Armbian image is downloaded, unzip the archive. Start Rufus and select the device corresponding to the drive letter of the microSD card. Don’t worry about all the other settings. Just load  the .raw file from the unzipped Armbian archive in the ‘Create a bootable disk using’ section. Proceed formatting and writing the image on your microSD card, which might take a while (around 30 minutes).

Next, insert the card in the Orange Pi. Connect the keyboard, video cable and turn on your computer screen or TV. Finally, power on the Orange Pi. Then, after 2 or 3 minutes, while the system is configuring, you will see a login screen like this, reading ‘orangepiplus2e login’:

The username is ‘root’ and the password is ‘1234’. After you enter this information you will see another screen where you have to create your own login.

After you type in your new username and password, the Orange pi will boot the desktop and you will see the screen below and from here you are good to go:

Armbian on the eMMC

The Orange Pi Plus 2e has an eMMC, which in general will offer faster booting and read/writes than microSD cards. So if you want to take advantage of that, you can install Armbian on the eMMC of the Orange Pi.  To do this, we can run the included NAND, SATA, eMMC and USB install script. So open the xTerm terminal emulator from the Applications menu, under System, and type in:

sudo nand-sata- install

After typing in your password, you have only one option: ‘Boot from eMMC – system on eMMC’. Select OK:

Select OK again on the next screen, and after about 30 minutes, the eMMC installation is complete. You’ll know the installation is finished when you see this screen:

Power off the system, remove the microSD card and power it back on. You will see the desktop again.

That’s it, now you can boot directly from the eMMC and start working on your projects!