The big problem with the C.H.I.P. is that it used raw NAND flash as the main storage (and MLC NAND on the original boards at that), which just wasn't something that could be supported upstream. I think more or less everything else required for upstream support was there a long time ago. This should hopefully avoid that problem; it's using EMMC which doesn't have that problem and it looks like it's based on the Allwinner A64 which already has fairly good mainline Linux support.