NixOS on the uConsole
Declarative NixOS with prebuilt images for the CM4 (CM5 experimental) from nixos-uconsole, grown out of voidcontext's CM4 port; the A-06 has a wiki guide.
What it takes
- Software only
Difficulty 1 of 3 — easy.
Details
voidcontext's thread (April 2024) had NixOS booting on a CM4 with the display, keyboard and WiFi working within a week, using PotatoMania's kernel patches and the official overlays; the code lives on git.vdx.hu with a GitHub mirror. In January 2026 zyriab announced nixos-uconsole/nixos-uconsole: prebuilt .img.zst images on GitHub Releases, a flake for custom configurations, a Cachix binary cache on nixpkgs 25.11, kernel patches for display, power and audio, and overlays for CM4 overclocking — CM4 stable, CM5 experimental, MIT-licensed, with kernel work from robertjakub's oom-hardware and support from ClockworkPi.
The A-06 is a separate lineage: the NixOS wiki has a guide for the Clockworkpi A06 uConsole on a 6.6 kernel.
Links
Open at Forum threadRelated mods
The community's recommended OS: Debian 13 on Rex's patched Pi kernel, desktop and Lite variants, for CM3+, CM4, CM4S and CM5.
The previous Debian release of Rex's line, still rebuilt for the new screens in 2026 — the fallback when something on Trixie is not ready yet.
Rex's Kali image for CM4 and CM5 on the uConsole kernel with the hardware presets; cuu's original CM4 build is documented on the ClockworkPi wiki.
Rex's Parrot OS build for CM3/CM4/CM5 in Home and Security editions, plus krokowitz's Security spin with RTL-SDR and ALFA drivers preinstalled.
Rex's build of DragonOS Pi64 — an Ubuntu 22.04 SDR distribution with the radio tools preinstalled — on the uConsole kernel for CM4 and CM5.
Ubuntu on the uConsole kernel for CM3/CM4/CM5 — originally 24.04, now 26.04 on the 7.1.y kernel line.