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Comment by phineastcat | Hacker News Reader

Crappy upstream kernel support on alternative boards is probably why the Raspberry Pi is king of this kingdom.

I chose to forgo all the cheaper options from China for a recent project, and instead go with (considerably) more expensive Raspberry Pi 3's, because I didn't want to risk the shite software support. I know I'm going to get kernel and firmware upgrades on those boards for a good long while, and that's one less thing I have to worry about.

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You could have gone with the one of the BeagleBone varieties. BeagleBoard seems to be the only real contender that the Pi line faces, from a community standpoint. Each unit is a few bucks more, but that'll go towards strengthening an ecosystem around boards that are even more open than what you get with the Pi.

It's hard to get the benefits of volume when everyone keeps going for the cheaper-right-now board in order to maximize their own short-term benefits. Contributing to the network effect by buying a Pi because it's cheaper and more popular is not exactly the thing that will lead to Broadcom getting rebuffed and having to answer for all their problems.

I bought one board with an Allwinner chip on it. Great specs, but utterly useless. There is no support for the graphics driver, tons of bugs in the chipset, and virtually no help online unless maybe if you speak Mandarin.

I'm not making that mistake again.

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