We recommend grabbing a distribution from our website: Index of /ci/
These images are CI’ed so they are known to boot.
Armbian does not to my knowledge have CI integrated image tests. The builds could work or not work depending on the state of the Armbian codebase. It also uses ext4 which is less reliable on SBCs and prone to data errors.
MicroSD cards are generally compatible. It’s rare to have a compatibility problem. That said, we do have ones we recommend per the guides found all over this website.
Make sure you extract the image before flashing. Make sure you have the right image for your board and not the wrong board image.