On 2021.02.19 13:37, Diederik de Haas wrote:
On vrijdag 19 februari 2021 00:02:27 CET Rick Thomas wrote:
Is it possible to install Debian Bullseye on a Raspberry Pi 4 (4GB) from a
CD/DVD or USB Flash stick or uSDcard?
If so, where would I look for instructions for doing so?
https://raspi.debian.net/tested-images/ contains a Bullseye image that is
tested on a RPi4 4GB.
Technically, this is not as much installing Debian, which is what OP
asked about, but more taking an image that was installed/setup by
somebody else, and flat-copying that to your media.
The end result is that you may not have as much flexibility with user
setup, partitioning and so on, as you would have with using the formal
Debian installer.
And of course, the problem with preinstalled images like these is that
distro maintainers need to multiply them for every platform they want to
support, which quickly become unmanageable and leaves any user of any
platform that hasn't deemed worth supporting stranded...
The established goal of SBBR, which is a bona fide ARM standard that was
designed precisely to address this major pain point, is to stop this
madness and let the platform developers (rather than the distro
maintainers) take care sorting out platform support by:
1. Making sure that the platform has a well established means of
booting, through a formal UEFI firmware, which, despite its misgivings,
is arguably the most user-friendly way to do so, as it mimics the known
PC user experience.
2. Working with mainline kernel to add whatever ACPI drivers are needed
to support their platform, which too is arguably better than requiring
everyone to use your "custom" version of the kernel.
I can only be hopeful that, since this should aid reduce their workload,
and especially avoid the multiplication of custom images for this or
that platform, both distro maintainers and contributors will come to
realize that a phase shift is happening and that now is the time to
start moving away from the old "If you want to run our distro on ARM,
then you'll first need to flat-copy this custom image" paradigm...
Regards,
/Pete
