Rockchip Debian
Running Debian on Rockchip boards: vendor images, Armbian and building your own rootfs.
Debian is the default desktop and server distribution in the Rockchip Linux SDK and in most board-vendor images. You can also build a minimal arm64 rootfs with debootstrap and pair it with any kernel and U-Boot you control. This is the cleanest path for products that need apt, systemd and a reproducible base.
Key points
- Rockchip SDK builds a Debian rootfs with hardware-accelerated GStreamer (MPP) and Mali userspace pre-integrated.
- debootstrap --arch=arm64 plus qemu-user-static lets you build the rootfs on an x86 host.
- Armbian provides maintained Debian images for many RK3588/RK3566/RK3399 boards.