> Oh, I should clarify. By "official Debian binaries and images" I meant
> to say "pure" or "mainline" Debian as distributed from *.debian.org. Yes,
> a bespoke "Debian" image from the hardware vendor is, indeed, out of the
> question. ARMbian is better, but I know and deeply trust the Debian project
> and would prefer to use their releases over those from a derivative
> like ARMbian.
Sadly, the way to install&configure a bootloader is not well
standardized on those ARM SBCs, indeed.
What I've done is either:
- learn enough of how the boot works on my machine to manually install
and configure the bootloader (and keep it configured properly when
updating the kernel).
- use an existing device-specific image as a basis and then convert it
to a "real" Debian system (which still requires figuring out to
update the configuration when the kernel is updating since those
images are typically completely oblivious to such needs, they seem
designed under the assumption that those SBCs will be setup once and
either thrown away a few months later or just left there to bitrot).
The first is the only option in the long run but the second can get you
started more quickly.
Stefan
