When Debian fits better than Yocto

The following article is a well-written description of the tradeoffs between Yocto and Debian for embedded systems by Richard Weinberger.

You probably don’t need Yocto, and that’s fine

From the conclusion in the above post:

• “Your own distribution” really means your own maintenance. The CRA and similar regulations make that bill come due.
• A heavily modified Yocto build doesn’t inherit upstream fixes for free. Every maintenance release becomes review and rework.
• An established distribution like Debian, assembled into an image with mkosi, ELBE, or debos, covers the common case with a fraction of the per-project effort.
• When you need surgical control over the system, Yocto wins. When you don’t, picking it is a long, expensive way of solving a problem you don’t have.

These are good points and exactly why [yoe] build exists.

The BSP is still a big question as these are getting quite complex. I’m currently betting that LLMs can help us port BSPs with a reasonable effort, but that is an ongoing experiment.