Pratyush Kumar StrixROX

Tailscale on Raspberry Pi Zero W (Jan 2026)

Preface

First of all, this thing has abysmal official support from both Tailscale and Raspberry Pi.

Pi Zero W hardware is so old it can't even run Ubuntu server images (which I found out the hard way after failing to install ubuntu server onto it). So the only linux flavors that work on it are the ones that show up in the Raspberry Pi Imager. I decided to use Raspberry Pi OS Lite (32-bit variant).

	# ~/.bash_aliases
	# ...

	# Assuming you already have ROS installed...

	# First create an empty file ~/.ros_workspaces using:
	# `touch ~/.ros_workspaces`
	# (I used this file to automatically source the devel/setup.bash
	# script from all my ROS workspaces on startup)

	# /etc/netplan/50-cloud-init.yaml
	# Indent size = 2 spaces. No tabspaces allowed.
	#
	# This file is generated from information provided by the datasource. Changes
	# to it will not persist across an instance reboot. To disable cloud-init's
	# network configuration capabilities, write a file
	# /etc/cloud/cloud.cfg.d/99-disable-network-config.cfg with the following: <------- {{ PAY ATTENTION TO THIS PART. This may be different for you; follow your version }}
	# network: {config: disabled}
	network:
	version: 2

	# ~/.bash_aliases
	# ...

	# loads all saved ssh keys
	# to know to how generate ssh keys to use with GitHub, refer: https://docs.github.com/en/authentication/connecting-to-github-with-ssh
	# Usage:
	# authgit
	function authgit {
	eval "$(ssh-agent -s)"
	ssh-add

	import requests
	import os
	import time
	import ctypes

	# user-defined variables
	tempFolder = f"C:/Users/{os.getlogin()}/AppData/Local/Temp/"
	downloadFolder = os.path.join(tempFolder, "unsplash-downloaded-wallpapers")
	unsplashQuery = os.path.basename(__file__)[:-3] # this script's filename without extension
	imageSize = "1920x1080"

	font_family Noto Sans
	bold_font auto
	italic_font auto
	bold_italic_font auto
	font_size 12.0

	background_opacity 0.55

	enabled_layouts splits

	alias c="clear"
	alias l="ls"
	alias editals="nano ~/.bash_aliases"
	alias loadbash="source ~/.bashrc"

	# Bash prompt customization
	CYAN="\[$(tput setaf 51)\]"
	GREEN="\[$(tput setaf 48)\]"
	RESET="\[$(tput setaf sgr0)\]"

	alias c="clear"
	alias l="ls --group-directories-first"
	alias la="ls -a --group-directories-first"
	alias editals="nano ~/.bash_aliases"
	alias loadbash="source ~/.bashrc"

	# Bash prompt customization
	#CYAN="\033[038;5;51m"
	#GREEN="\033[038;5;40m"
	#RESET="\033[0m"

	{
	"presets": [
	"@babel/preset-env",
	[
	"@babel/preset-react",
	{
	"runtime": "automatic"
	}
	]
	],