Re: Debian on Pi (was: basic function tell an function)

At Fri, 28 Aug 2026 16:25:40 -0400 Stefan Monnier <[email protected]> wrote:

> 
> > I wouldn't have said off-topic, I treat my two Pis as if they were
> > running standard Debian and very rarely bump into anything
> > Pi-specific, despite their fairly exotic hardware. I try things out on
> > my HP Intel workstation running sid, and can normally transfer results
> > directly to a Pi on 32 or 64 bit ARM.
> 
> Running Debian on single-board computers like Raspberry Pis is very much
> on topic here: such hardware is not "exotic" in my book.
> 
> I have been happily running Debian on "Pis" (Orange Pi, Banana Pi, Nano
> Pi, Odroid) since somewhere around 2013, and I really mean "Debian".
> [ I guess I started down that path when I started "running" Debian in
>   a chroot (within OpenWRT) on my Wl-700gE, sometime around 2007 maybe?  ]
> 
> Admittedly, the initial installation typically required non-Debian
> elements (e.g. because there is no Debian Install yet when I got the
> SBC.  I typically started with some pre-built non-Debian U-Boot and
> kernel, then either cloned an existing root filesystem (from one of my
> other Pis) or built a new one with something like debootstrap).
> 
> > The Pi variant is orders of magnitude closer to real Debian than
> > Ubuntu and other derivatives.  It's really only installation which is
> > significantly different, and with which users of real Debian will not
> > be able to help.

The only "different" between Raspberry OS and Debian on a "PC" is a handful of
Raspberry Pi specific packages (raspi_config, etc.) and how the kernel is
setup and the boot logic -- no grub on any 'Pis, and *Raspberry* Pis have a
VFAT /boot or /boot/firmware file system, and other Pis have U-Boot, which
needs some special magic. These little SBCs have some various kernel overlay
stuff, which is never seen on your standard Wintel PC, again for various
"exotic" hardware. The RPi4s and RPi5s do have PCIe buses, most other PIs
don't.

> 
> Indeed, tho in the majority of cases, the question is about problems
> during the installation.  🙁
> 
> 
> === Stefan
> 
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