What's a good image to use now? [tutorial help as well]

[Der Geist der Maschine]

so, I tried again, twice
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2147483648 bytes (2.1 GB, 2.0 GiB) copied, 288.64 s, 7.4 MB/s
Setting up swapspace version 1, size = 2 GiB (2147479552 bytes)
no label, UUID=9bed6eb0-5672-4607-9c21-b58daadebb99
install: cannot create regular file '/home/d/pinebook-pro-debian-installer/sysimage/etc/fstab': No such file or directory

You don't have a etc/ directory. That gets created by the installation of all the many Debian packages (they install some files into the etc/ directory thereby creating it).

Perhaps something went wrong in do_prep(). The code differs between Debian and Manjaro:

Code:

do_prep () {
        printf '\n\n>>>> Preparing to install\n\n'

        git submodule update --init

        PACKAGES="debootstrap pigz dosfstools"
        [ ! -z "$CRYPT" ] && PACKAGES="$PACKAGES cryptsetup"

        if [ -x "$(command -v apt-get)" ]
        then
                sudo apt-get install -y $PACKAGES
        else if [ -x "$(command -v pacman)" ]
        then
                sudo pacman -S --needed --noconfirm $PACKAGES
        else
                printf '\n\nWARNING: could not find a package manager.\n'
                printf 'Make sure the following packages are installed:\n'
                printf "  $PACKAGES\n\n"
        fi
        fi
}

Are you sure the "Preparing to install" phase went through fine?

I run the debian installer from Debian (initially from Mrfix't Debian 9 ... and nowadays from a debian bootstrap'ed Debian 10, 11 and 12). I never tried to run it from Manjaro. I'm sure many folks did it. There should be hope. Just analyze the output from the do_prep() phase (or from any other previous phase).