This is mostlyīecause it's inconvenient to have to use two drives when one can most certainly do, and also because while USB to SD may lookĮasier on paper (no need to fiddle with the 'CD-ROM' device for instance) it's actually more difficult to complete properly. Words, there is no need to use an additional USB Flash Drive, as we could do, toīoot the Debian installer and then install from USB to SD. Using a single media for the whole installation process. Note that our goal here is to install the system on a SD card, through netinstall,

If you're ever seeing a lightning bolt on the top left of your display during install, please invest into a power supply that can deliver more wattage.

A Raspberry Pi 3 (Model B or Model B+) with a proper power source.

You may also manage with a USB Flash Drive, but this guide is geared primarily towards SD card installation

A micro SD card with sufficient space (16 GB or more recommended).

I mean, what's the point of having an 64-bit CPU if the distro you're going to install forces you to use 32-bit? That's because, in terms of long term support and features, nothing beats a vanilla distro. Not that I don't like Raspbian or Armbian (as a matter of fact I am impressed by the very fine job the Armbian maintainers are doing with their distro), but I have now spent enough time helping with the UEFI Raspberry Pi 3 effort not to push this whole endeavour to its logical conclusion: Install vanilla ARM64 GNU/Linux distros.

Debian Installer Force Text Mode