Sorry for double asking, but I remember during and after the release, any update of Ubuntu OS in apollo would brick mining and card had to be reflashed. That's why I moved away from default Ubuntu setup and installed my own Armbian, I used it for a year at that time, but now I use Apollo via another machine and USB cable.
Now, I am setting up another Apollo soon, so I am checking if I can stay lazy-style with Ubuntu or have to grind with Armbian again.
Good to hear that Ubuntu system is confirmed to be safe to update at all times, as long as it's not being upgraded beyond 20.04 LTS.
The reason for all that is that I generally don't accept insecure devices in my network. Ubuntu OS without updates for a half a year, or a year at a time, is what I consider insecure device.
I haven't tried, but it seems that we can now keep the OS updated without worries indeed.
It was a big concern of mine too, actually you had motivated me to look into flashing custom Armbian and I made a guide for getting it working even through GPIO.
But that's kind of pointless now, especially since 'Futurebit OS' is actually Armbian too. Just wanted to point that out since from your message it appears that you think they're running Ubuntu.
As far as I know, Armbian is the only distro you can get precompiled for the Orange Pi 4 online.