DietPi VS raspibolt

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.

For those interested in setting up a their own lightning node, check out Raspibolt, Umbrel, Plebnet .

That said, the benefits of using and understanding lnd directly are huge. I strongly recommend the raspibolt tutorial to anybody who is willing to learn to run a simple linux system via command line.

So overall I recommend you to start from the scratch using at least a 1TByte SSD, better 2. And either follow https://raspibolt.org/ for full sovereignty. Or if that seems too difficult for you look into https://raspiblitz.org/.

If you want an actual guide with a lot of the bells and whistles explained I recommend https://raspibolt.org/

The main sources of information to build my full node are Ministry Of Nodes’ video tutorials on YouTube and the incredible RaspiBolt guide. Both have been very useful to get me started in this beautiful project, but I faced some issues every now and then due to the fact that I was dealing with newer versions of the apps and things didn’t work out of the box all the time so I had to RTFM here and there.