With help I was able to install Armbian on my Vero 4k. It’s not a normal installation, because u-boot doesn’t read the Armbian kernel and dtb by default. I had to UART the device to find out what exactly happened and change the boot environment. For installation UART is not needed, although messing with the boot environment without access to UART is risky.
Disclaimer: this is not an official Armbian installation method and also not supported by OSMC.
Proceed at your own risk and consider to keep OSMC with these very useful options first:
- [Testing] X11(simple desktop) + Chromium(web browser) in a simple installer for Stretch
- NON-OFFICIAL headless arm64 docker solution for Vero4k(+)
Here are full instructions: OSMC Vero 4k (non plus) (2GB/16GB) (SD card needed) - TV Boxes running Armbian - Armbian Community Forums
Here’s the original post with pictures and UART logs for anyone who’s interested: Installing Armbian on Vero 4k, does not boot from SD Card - Amlogic CPU Boxes - Armbian Community Forums
My personal motivation for getting Armbian to work is to have V4L2 from the newer kernels. AFAIK this is not possible with the provided Docker solution. Also, I wanted to learn about Linux/ARM/u-boot/soldering etc.