Will it be possible to update to 11 or 12 as I’d like to run Cockpit to manage all my Pis and the shakenets are the only ones I cannot install the Cockpit files onto as buster is not supported?
That’s correct; our latest Shake OS (v0.20) runs a modified Debian 10 (Buster) release.
It is possible that, for a future Shake OS version, we could be implementing the latest (at the time) Debian release (12+), but there is no current ETA for this to happen. You can do two things for now:
if what you want to achieve is not urgent, wait for a new, updated Shake OS release; or
try to upgrade the OS yourself and see if anything breaks.
You can easily perform all the tests you want, as going back to the current Shake OS is just a microSD card re-burn away: microSD card topics
If you find that the new Debian releases do break something, a possible (temporary) solution could be installing ZeroTier (How to connect to Raspberry Shake remotely) to help manage the Shake. However, I think that this could be doing less than what Cockpit is able to do, so I don’t know if it can be an effective alternative for you.