Re: Any suggestions for a Debian(based/like) OS for the Orange Pi zero2

["Rick Thomas" <rick.thomas@pobox.com>]

On Mon, Oct 10, 2022, at 3:31 AM, RobJE wrote:
> Hi Rick,
>
> On 10-10-2022 04:17, Rick Thomas wrote:
>> He Debian Arm folks,
>> 
>> Out of curiosity, I recently bought a couple of Orange Pi zero2 kits because I wanted to see what could be done with such a really inexpensive board.
>> 
>> Now I'm looking for an OS.  The Orange Pi web site claims that it supports Debian and Ubuntu among others, but I can't find any links to where to download Debian or Ubuntu for this hardware.  So far the best I've been able to do is a Bullseye-based version of Armbian.  But I'd really like to have an un-modified Debian, if such a thing is possible.
>> 
>> Anybody got any suggestions?
>
> did you try the link on the Orange Pi wiki?  [1]
>
> [1] 
> <http://www.orangepi.org/html/hardWare/computerAndMicrocontrollers/service-and-support/Orange-Pi-Zero-2.html>
>
>> Thanks in advance!
>> Rick
>
> GRTNX,
> RobJE

Yes, in fact I discovered that one after I had written my original post.  It works pretty well.  But there's some rather strange things about it:
    The /etc/apt/sources.list file is directed to 
http://mirrors.tuna.tsinghua.edu.cn/debian
    rather than
https://deb.debian.org/debian
    Is there something special about the Chinese mirror that I should know?  If not, can I replace it with the stock debian mirror?
    And there are a few .deb packages that come pre-installed but are not present on that mirror.  Most of them have "orangepi" as part of their package name.  Their purpose seems to be to help in configuring the system.  Many of them are borrowed almost verbatim from the Armbian distribution for Orange Pi with "armbian" replaced by "orangepi".
    Also, the installed system uses zram files for swap and /var/log .  This is probably to limit the space the distro takes up on an SD card, and it works OK, but it's not what I'd expect from a "stock" Debian install.  It would be interesting to know where those .deb files reside when their at home (i.e. is there a repository that could/should have been included in the sources.list ?)

In any case, my next try will be the stock Debian AArch64 installer image as recommended by Marcin.

Thanks to everyone for all the good answers so far -- keep 'em coming!
Rick