An RPi can also run Debian Forky, except that when a Pi5, it will likely still need to use kernel and bootloader/firmware from RPL. In theory, you can replace trixie with forky in Debian sources.list, but keep raspi.list/sources as is. I did the same more or less when I found RPiOS bullseye too old for a RPi3B. Never needed rollback, always worked. But now differences between RPIOS Trixie and Debian Trixie/Forky are much bigger, especially networking, that can be tricky if you don't study NetworkManager enough before it maybe wants to update to a Forky version.My daily x86-64 PC is already on forky but my bash scripts need extra code to cope with 5.2 on my PI server
In a few weeks Debian Forky ARM64 kernel should be 6.18.x, and should support Raspberries as usual, including now RPi5 RP1 chip that you need for ethernet connection, other things on RPi5 I don't know, might be missing.
For RPi3 and RPI4, those should run fine with vanilla Forky, so nothing from RPiOS. Certain HW related things, like camera, GPIO pin function and video codecs won't work, but if use-case is generic ARM64 server in textmode, it is fine, with advantage that all is the same versions as on x86-64.
Statistics: Posted by redvli — Thu Jan 01, 2026 7:14 pm