# balenaOS as a service on Debian (balenaOS-by-degrees)

**URL:** <https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162>\
**Category:** balenaOS\
**Created:** [November 25, 2020, 5:18pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162 "2020-11-25T17:18:19Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 4\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![jkridner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/jkridner/32/4982_2.png) [@jkridner](https://forums.balena.io/u/jkridner)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 5:18pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162/1 "2020-11-25T17:18:19Z")

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Would it be possible for you to build a somewhat feature-limited implementation of balenaOS as a native or Docker service on top of Debian? I’d like to simplify evaluation of balenaCloud to deploy apps with VPN and other services, without necessarily enabling remote image updates and other items that would require a specific disk format or a specific host distribution outside of the balenaOS sandbox. This sort of “by degrees” approach would enable faster evaluation with less commitment than flashing a board and giving up whatever other tools are used in the OS image.

It seems conceivable to me that [BeagleBoard.org](http://BeagleBoard.org) could one day flip to running Debian itself as more of a managed service (guest distribution), but that isn’t an easy switch to flip. Trying to integrate balenaOS and [BeagleBoard.org](http://BeagleBoard.org) Debian with balenaOS as the guest is a far simpler first step for new users and [BeagleBoard.org](http://BeagleBoard.org) community support.

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**Author:** ![jkridner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/jkridner/32/4982_2.png) [@jkridner](https://forums.balena.io/u/jkridner)\
**Post date:** [November 25, 2020, 5:21pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162/3 "2020-11-25T17:21:54Z")

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What a fast response!

> **[balena-os/balenaos-in-container](https://github.com/balena-os/balenaos-in-container)**
>
> Run balenaOS as a docker container. Contribute to balena-os/balenaos-in-container development by creating an account on GitHub.

😉

I guess I need to do a better job of searching for the right things first. I’m going to give this a try.

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**Author:** ![jkridner](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/jkridner/32/4982_2.png) [@jkridner](https://forums.balena.io/u/jkridner)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2020, 5:49pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162/5 "2020-12-03T17:49:45Z")

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This simply isn’t working cleanly. Is there a generic armv7 image I can run on a BeagleBone Green Gateway? resin/resinos:2.58.3\_rev4.dev-beaglebone-black seems to make a muck of things.

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**Author:** ![ab77](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/balena/user_avatar/forums.balena.io/ab77/32/2870_2.png) [@ab77](https://forums.balena.io/u/ab77)\
**Post date:** [December 3, 2020, 8:18pm UTC](https://forums.balena.io/t/balenaos-as-a-service-on-debian-balenaos-by-degrees/216162/6 "2020-12-03T20:18:18Z")

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Hi there, we have only the images you are already aware of. You could try one of the newer images listed [here](https://www.balena.io/docs/reference/base-images/base-images-ref/#beaglebone-black).