I think this actually highlights part of the problem. There's certainly a ton of capable products there, lots of stuff that looks very fun to play with. You can probably find something with whatever specific combo of features you need for your project.

However, there's two big issues: price and availability.

Price is obvious. If you want to spend $200 or more you have a massive number of options. However, this is a far cry from the $35-75 for a Pi, plus for both you still need a power supply, case, etc.

I can also order a Pi from a couple different sites, and probably pick one up locally in a pinch, too. It seems like there's lot of other boards where you can't actually buy one. Some are in the category of "how many thousand would you like?" It's just a totally different world than the Pi's distribution and ecosystem, to the point it's not really fair to consider for the average hobbyist.

There's dozens of readily available case options and other add-ons for the Pi.

I also know if I build software for the Pi I'll still be able to buy another one anytime I want for the next few years, and due to its popularity chances are for the next decade (if not a real Pi, someone will make a clone).

It's great there's options, but the fact a product merely exists doesn't instantly make it a viable alternative.

$10 to $75 for a Pi - the RPi Zero can be gotten for $10 and it remains very capable. The Pi has no competition among SBCs on bang-for-your-buck: I have extensively checked. You can get lower prices (and lower memory) on microcontroller systems, but for hobbyists, you'll be additionally paying with your time

The RPi Zero has been a joke for two full years: produced in extremely small quantities and sold at loss just to keep customers away from the competition. Of course there are a few people who somehow managed to get one or two without being forced to purchase it bundled with unnecessary overpriced stuff, and they usually were very quick to point that out in forums (while downvoting any criticism), but they were a really small minority. Things may have changed, but too late: I've removed the RPi from the list of the boards I could purchase for anything but video playing. My video player has been a RPi1, then 2, then 3 now 4, but all the other older Pi boards lie now unused in a drawer while I rather use other stuff (Odroids, Orange PIs, NanoPIs, probably getting soon a Pine64B from the excellent pine64.org guys, etc.). The RPi has a lot of competition, almost all of it more powerful or more cheap, sometimes even both.

Odroids are consistently more expensive than nearest Raspberry equivalent, older Orange Pis (Orange Pi Zero) are even harder to find that RPi Zeros! "Harder" is the wrong word - Orange Pi Zeros are impossible to find. The upcoming wifi cam from Pine64 is the best-next-thing to the RPi 0 for my use case and price range, but its not yet out.

For now, nothing beats the RPi 0 on price, as well as features-per-dollar. The closest is an Onion M2, IIRC. It's $9 before shipping, but only has 64MB memory. I'm prototyping /piloting on RPi Zeros, but if I end up scaling to 1000's of sites (which is why I cant use a $200 SBC per site. It's a self-funded passion project), I'll likely have to switch to the Onions due to the limited availability of RPis you mentioned

And almost none of it available in my country without paying more in shipping than the actual product.

Are you sure about that? Many of these boards are sold by Chinese vendors, and usually shipping from China/HK is very cheap because their govt subsidizes shipping. You also have the fast courier option which of course will cost a lot more, but that's just one of the options. When contacting them just be sure they use a tracked method, and much better if they support PayPal which employs an effective user protection against missed or damaged deliveries, faulty products, fakes etc. That's what for example pushed me away from buying more Orange PI boards years ago since although the products are really good their manufacturer and vendor gave no other option than their Aliexpress shop that didn't support PayPal.

> Many of these boards are sold by Chinese vendors

Which means my country’s very good consumer protections don’t apply, which immediately rules them out for me.

No risk? No fun! Boring...

Seen pragmatically your "protection" in buying such small things, where the transport costs more than the things themselves is denying the seller a good rating, until one item that is functional arrives. AND/OR disputing via whatever payment service, or simply writing it off.

I don’t know why you equate fun and risk; it’s my limited expendable cash we’re talking, not yours.

In countries where consumer protections are a complete joke, and a bad purchase is as good as a write-off, I could perhaps understand this sentiment.

However, I don’t have money to splash out on things that might be broken on arrival. I’ve already bought a few Raspberry Pis that needed returning and doing so was hassle free as soon as I quoted the Consumer Guarantees and Fair Trading Acts. At most places, I don’t need to bother.

(Another benefit is I never need to buy extended warranties; legal protections here tend to last longer than those anyway!)

If I can get the product in New Zealand via a local supplier, and I tend to prefer to support local businesses anyway, I can have just as much fun without any risk.

I know what you mean, and didn't intend to make fun of you and understand your reasoning.

I just wrote that because of my experience in Germany, where I'm from, one tends to see the sourcing of gadgets from China like that.

I once ordered a NanoPi Neo2 with 1GB RAM, some 'Sata-Hat' for it, and a fitting metal case made of aluminum. Was about 50 US$ with the wall plug, directly from the vendor, waiting some weeks for delivery, and the possibility of hassle with customs, though unlikely for something of that price.

So i applied your reasoning and sourced it locally. BANG! 99EUR!!! Didn't make that much sense anymore, economically, but i wanted it. Then the delivery service fucked up, it got returned/canceled by the delivery service because I complained about their reason "could not find address", while having seen the driver speeding away at the end of his tour from my window, which was obvious from the online tracking with real time map which they offered.

Had to tell the vendor I did NOT cancel, please send again, this time with a more reliable delivery service, if possible.

Finally I got it! (That was the 'fun', the rest I could have done without)

Would it break now, i'd have no consumer protection at all because i bought it way more than half a year ago, which is how long ours last.

Since I'm no power shopper, this made me think about my/your reasoning, and the conclusion that if you want something from "there", either the 'no risk, no fun' thing is the way to go, or it doesn't exist, since sourcing it locally at least doubles the price, or it isn't available at all.

Ordered a few things since then, had no hassle, everything was good, and at least 3 times cheaper.

Even have Alipay connected to my bank/checking account and identity card, which was possible to set up via browser at the time.

The idea of supporting local businesses is appealing in theory, but seems to hail from bygone ages. Again, as seen from Germany, because nowadays many here are either clueless and/or scammy, which takes the 'fun' out of it.

So, coming back to the little expendable cash, the only remaining question for me is: Does it make sense to have some man in the middle delivering my cheap things for at least 50% more?

The sheet quantity of boards here is another problem - I'd personally much prefer a curated list, with recommendations for different use cases.

There are two major distributions aimed at more than one board, they're Armbian and DietPI, I would suggest reading through their forums because of the good number of people familiar with different boards, so those might likely be the best places to ask if task X is better accomplished by board A or B etc. . Sometimes however boards are similar to each other for employing the same SoC, so it's not rare finding an image that boots successfully both a board from one vendor and a TV Box from another vendor. There are many ready images for tested hardware, but users are encouraged to rebuild the images and make more test to unknown hardware then report findings.

https://www.armbian.com/

https://dietpi.com/ (warning: puke inducing site colors! :-)

What is puke inducing there? The green?

I'd call that color scheme Liquorice-Absinthmeister :-)

> What is puke inducing there? The green?

Yes, I find it extremely uncomfortable to look at; literally a punch in the eye.

Popcorn Computer is very close to shipping. https://shop.popcorncomputer.com/

Pine64 has a number of SBCs and also other products that build around them. https://store.pine64.org/product-category/pine-h64-boards/

Both offer things in similar price ranges as Raspberry Pi. I have some of each (if you consider the Popcorn to be a true successor to the CHiP as the seller does).

I really wanted the CHiP to succeed and was going to grab a pocket chip when I had the spare cash. Unfortunate what happened, but if popcorn ship, it looks like a good successor.

This list is missing a very important column -- "quality of Linux support"

There is a great difference between a board which uses mainline kernel and is supported by major distros, and a board which can only run specific old version of OpenWRT and a patched 2.6.x kernel.