How is the access for various OS distros for the non-pi boards. I tried a few about 6-8 years ago that were more powerful than the Pi at the time, but suffered from a lot of misc issues, and the availability of baseline OS support was really lacking at the time. I can run Ubuntu Server images on the Pi, but how is the support on this other hardware?

I feel more comfortable that the x86 devices will be better supported by community distros than non raspberri pi arm boards from this past experience. The 8gb Pis are enough to play around with home-lab getting more familiar with Kubernetes and setup/configure for distributed software, but wouldn't mind a bit more compute power to go with it.

Also, I kind of wish more of these were direct sale rather than kickstarter/crowdsupply backed, etc. I have already lost enough money on various projects that I've stopped backing things. I know it's always a risk, but at this point it's been much less worth it for me.

edit: One addition, cases for those of us without 3D printer access or experience is another common issue.