I've been a Freescale/NXP customer for decades and I like their stuff. Their documentation is comprehensive, their technical notes and errata are free to read. They're not perfect but they work at it. Their Github presence is decent. iMX is a good line for Linux, LPC for microcontrollers but the new iMXRT parts are looking great for FreeRTOS.

I don't work as much with TI but I've used Panda in the past for OMAP4 and some personal work with Beagle/AM335x and it's solid stuff. I'd like to think Beagle's community is as good as RPi's, just a little more low-key (and the chipmaker participates as well)

I've always been a fan of the iMX line - they're my goto reference designs for low volume embedded work along with STM32Fx for MCUs - but the BSPs are just not comparable for hobbyists.

With RaspPi you can download an SD card image fully set up with a simple "wpa_supplicant.conf" for WiFi and a Bounjour discovery service to register a hostname like 'pi.local'. Takes like an hour with a crappy connection and then another hour at most for apt-get update. Need to hook a security camera? Download a prebuilkt MotionEyeOS image. Need to control a CNC with GCode and a .Net core API? Grab the Duet 3 and a raspberry pi.

If you can use Multistrap then all you need is a linux kernel and you can build a full Debian system for your Linux chip.

Thanks for your reply. I've been working with Raspberry Pi and Nvidia Jetson hardware lately, and there is a pretty interesting (ahem) dichotomy in terms of friendliness of support and community. (maybe Nvidia's paying customers get more) I can see how one working at a very low level might regard both as being not sufficient.

I have some good memories of using TI embedded hardware (MSP430) and the documentation being pretty good. That's a different paradigm than a whole Unix system, though, even if it's a system that's going to be used for embedded stuff. It's nice to hear the Beagle situation is good. I remember those boards getting a hearty endorsement from Andrew Tanenbaum but otherwise I don't know too much about them.

iMX8 ist the most confusing product line ever, tough.

Yeah not gonna argue with you there. NXP has kind of muddied up all the product families with variants on core count and coprocessors.

The iMX6 used to be single, dual, (solo/duallite), quad. Done. Now there's what - 5 other variants? 7?

I suggest giving TI (Beagle) a serious look.