DietPi VS raspberrypi-sys-mods

DietPi is a lightweight Debian based Linux distribution for SBCs and server systems, with the option to install desktop environments, too. It ships as minimal image but allows to install complete and ready-to-use software stacks with a set of console based shell dialogs and scripts.

The source code is hosted on GitHub: https://github.com/MichaIng/DietPi

That's a good point, but the array of devices supported by the DietPi team is extensive: https://dietpi.com/

Before someone starts the usual yadda yadda about the RPi biger community, the OS not having long time support etc. I would repeat one more time: do not rely on board vendor supplied images; this is valid for pretty much all boards. Just go to Armbian or DietPi pages and you'll almost certainly find one or more images that work on your board and forums to discuss about them with very knowledgeable people.

https://www.armbian.com/download/

https://dietpi.com/#download

Those projects are well worth a contribution, as they don't have a giant like Broadcom behind them.

> bananapi do a lot of boards but their software story has been a bit poor

This is quite common with other board manufacturers too. I'd rather suggest to ignore completely their cobbled together distros, often also tainted by proprietary modifications, that become unmaintained in a few years, and see if they're among the many supported by Armbian or DietPi.

https://www.armbian.com/download/

https://dietpi.com/#download

The full release notes can be found at: https://dietpi.com/docs/releases/v8_25/

RPi OS = diet pi https://dietpi.com/ - initial config via text file - SDcard burning out partially mitigated as writes log files to ram then flushes to SDcard reducing write cycles

You could also try very minimalistic distros like TwisterUI or DietPi which are most known for their use in the RasprebbyPi / SBC computers but which also have editions for desktop / laptop.

There is a systemd service in Raspberry Pi OS that only runs if that file exists. It enables the SSH service and then removes the file.

Second, adding a third party repo to a "stable" distribution after the fact is a Big Deal. The way they originally did it gave Microsoft the ability to install arbitrary things on your machine. Even though that's been "fixed", now that the foundation has proven itself to be staffed by untrustworthy scumbags, you should be concerned about the Raspberry Pi foundation having the ability to install arbitrary things on your machine.

Doing an "apt show raspberrypi-sys-mods" lists a GitHub repo as the package's homepage, but the changes weren't published until a few hours ago, almost two weeks after the package was built and hours after people were talking about this issue. Here a comment by a dev admitting the changes weren't pushed to GitHub until today: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspberrypi-sys-mods/issues/41#issuecomment-773220437.

github commit: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspberrypi-sys-mods/commit/655cad5aee6457b94fc2336b1ff3c1104ccb4351

I think this is what you're talking about. As long as you've updated within the past three years, that's already happened.

There is no changelog about it and not even a commit on the package source repository: https://github.com/RPi-Distro/raspberrypi-sys-mods I was seriously worried until finding the responsible package and related topics on the Raspberry Pi Forum...

You can create ssh.txt instead. ssh and ssh.txt are both accepted.