Despite some other strange behaviour from Raspberry Pi Image Writer in its latest version, you can force the user ‘pi’ in the preamble, before writing the OS.
It was reported that version 1.94 of the writer upset the WiFi settings, although I did not have any experience of that myself, but version 1.96 almost by default takes any private key information that you used and forces that instead, so you have to be careful if you’re creating an image for someone else, as it removes the capability of password activation of the SSH function.
So if you are in the habit, as I am, of creating private/public keys for SSH, then when writing a new card, ensure you delete the key information in the image writer, and forcing password as the option, then save, before writing the image.
I have had one reply to my last version 25 post, indicating that ‘pi’ is no longer the default user, but I find that this was not the case. I have written the OS sd cards in the last two days with the user ‘pi’, twice with Raspberry pi imager and once with Balena etcher. Balena had no options to change the user to my knowledge.
The version 24 image is most certainly the default pi user, but writing it with the Raspberry Pi Image requires you NOT use the settings stored in the software.
If like me you have forgotten to remove the private key information, and have written to the card and installed it, then by using the same pc or mac you can SSH into the active raspberry, then edit the sshd config file, look for the ‘use password no’ changing it for yes, and saving it. Restart the ssh.service and then you can use any pc to SSH into the device.
Despite the release of Debian 13 (Trixie), I recommend every time to use Debian 12 (Bookworm) 32 bit Lite (No Desktop) for your svxlink installations. Like most new OS types there will be a settling in period, and many of the packages used in the svxlink may not yet have reached compatibility stage for the new OS. I know that there are a number of changes in development that will affect compilation of svxlink hinted by the author Tobias.