Armbian and Working Release/BeagleY-AI

Hello There,

I have tried three image building techniques for building Armbian Debian/GNU Linux Trixie with kernels for 6.12, 6.12 RT, and 6.18.

Here is the finality of my decisions. Stick with the 6.12 kernel with this command if you are not so Armbian savvy.

./compile.sh BOARD=beagley-ai RELEASE=trixie BUILD_DESKTOP=no BUILD_MINIMAL=yes KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no

If you know your way around Armbian and understand menuconfig a bit more than I do now, make sure the KERNEL_CONFIGURE=no is listed in the above command. I will keep trying but for this morning, I am out of ideas so far.

I was trying to build the images available without further configuration.

For my purpose of building the images, I needed USB and networking without using a HDMI PCB and/or extra USB ports for the keyboard and mouse which may or may not work. I have not tested the HDMI just yet on kernel 6.12. I also have not tested keyboard/mouse combinations yet either.

Still, all in all, kernel 6.12 with the above command builds like the rest of the images and this one worked for me.

I am going to research what exactly is needed to get USB working in the kernel for building with menuconfig soon and I will try to report back.

I am trying a Cinnamon-Armbian image now. Reports and findings along the way!

Update

It works. Here are some details…

# After an update/upgrade

uname -a: Linux beagley-ai 6.12.49-vendor-k3-beagle 
#1 SMP PREEMPT Sat Nov  1 23:35:52 CDT 2025 aarch64 GNU/Linux

cat os-release: 
PRETTY_NAME="Armbian-unofficial 26.05.0-trunk sid"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_CODENAME=forky
ID=debian
HOME_URL="https://www.armbian.com/"
SUPPORT_URL="https://forum.armbian.com"
BUG_REPORT_URL="https://www.armbian.com/bugs"
ARMBIAN_PRETTY_NAME="Armbian-unofficial 26.05.0-trunk sid"

I got the Cinnamon image flashed to the micro SD Card and it is placed in the booted BeagleY-AI but I am not receiving a display just yet.

Off to reboot!

There must be a trick of the trade for HDMI to work. I will keep looking into it.