I basically stopped buying SBCs several years ago, are there any SoC platforms that have mainline Linux support these days? Or is x86 still the way to go?
"Most ARM single board computers depend on proprietary binary blobs to boot or ship with outdated vendor kernels that are never upstreamed and quickly abandoned. Libre Computer takes a different approach: we fund and contribute to the mainline Linux kernel and U-Boot directly, ensuring our platforms run on upstream open-source software with minimal proprietary firmware."
I just scanned for WiFi networks and that worked fine. I also see that GPIO is not enabled for CIXP1 devices in Debian's kernel; I'll ask the kernel team to enable it.
There’s also a fairly usable UEFI implementation.
Had that issue with some Odroid boards, where the vendor kernel supported MFC hardware acceleration but the vanilla kernel didn't/doesn't. I'd like to avoid that
I believe I needed the vendor kernel to use video through the USB-C port, and to use the HW acceleration for transcoding in Jellyfin. This situation may have changed since my last attempts.