Brief history of the Orange Pi Plus 2E
Orange Pi Plus 2E was released by Shenzhen Xunlong 2016. There is no solid information of the launch day, but it is around April. The SBC is powered by Allwinner H3 chip (1.3 GHz, 4 cores) with 2GB DDR3 RAM and 16GB eMMC.
I personally don’t like the Allwinner chip due to poor performance. Suprisingly, this is my first-ever purchased SBC since it is very cheap.
Also, thanks to the poor stock firmware, I get to know Armbian and setup the Orange Pi Plus 2E as a home server with OpenVPN, Wireguard VPN, Pi-Hole and DDNS. It worked well for 2 and a half year (2019 – 2021), until I shut it down for new device upgrade.
Today, I take out the board for some tests before giving away. Unfortunately, the boot process interrupted halfway, so I decided to give it a fresh OS installation.
Install Armbian 26.2.0 (Debian Trixie)
The installation procedure for Allwinner chip is simple (for those who knows):
- Boot up Armbian from the microSD card
- Go to the OS and run the installation script to copy the OS to the internal eMMC
Step1: Download Debian 13 (Trixie) Minimal/IOT images with Armbian Linux v6.6
Once you downloaded the image, burn it to the microSD using Rufus.
Now, insert the microSD card to the Orange Pi Plus 2E, press and hold the SW2 button (sdcard boot) and connect the power supply. Armbian should be up and running from the microSD in few minutes.
Follow the console message to create the root password, and create a normal account/username. Once it is done, you can playaround with the OS. Some useful command:
armbian-config
armbian-upgrade
Step 2. Install Armbian to the internal eMMC
With root access, run the below command
armbian-install
Select 2. Boot from eMMC2 – System on eMMC and follow the guide to complete the installation
During this process, the eMMC will be formated. In my case, I choose ext4 for filesystem. It will take around 5 minutes to complete.
Once you see this message, just press Enter, disconnect the power supply, remove the microSD card and power the SBC back on. You are ready to go!
Some Tests with the Orange Pi Plus 2E on Dec 2025
OS and Linux kernel information
root@orangepiplus2e:~# cat /etc/os-release
PRETTY_NAME="Armbian_community 26.2.0-trunk.44 trixie"
NAME="Debian GNU/Linux"
VERSION_ID="13"
VERSION="13 (trixie)"
VERSION_CODENAME=trixie
DEBIAN_VERSION_FULL=13.2
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_community 26.2.0-trunk.44 trixie"
root@orangepiplus2e:~# uname -a
Linux orangepiplus2e 6.6.75-legacy-sunxi #1 SMP Sat Feb 1 17:37:57 UTC 2025 armv7l GNU/LinuxeMMC read sequential speed: 80.99 MB/s
root@orangepiplus2e:~# sudo hdparm -Tt /dev/mmcblk2
/dev/mmcblk2:
Timing cached reads: 1168 MB in 2.00 seconds = 583.62 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 244 MB in 3.01 seconds = 80.99 MB/sec
root@orangepiplus2e:~#eMMC sequential write speed: 151 MB/s
root@orangepiplus2e:~# dd if=/dev/zero of=/tmp/testfile.img bs=1G count=1 oflag=dsync
dd: error writing '/tmp/testfile.img': No space left on device
1+0 records in
0+0 records out
1052647424 bytes (1.1 GB, 1004 MiB) copied, 6.95331 s, 151 MB/s
root@orangepiplus2e:~#ipef3 throughput
- Normal, 4 streams (Upload): 849 Mbps
- Reversed, 4 streams (Download): 914 Mbps
That is all. Thanks for reading and long-live the Orange Pi Plus 2E.
