> * For software reliability and sustainability, what Linux distros are supported, do they upstream all changes, do they rely on closed drivers or blobs, etc.?

This has been the only reason to buy only RaspberryPis (when I could actually get them).

Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place.

I think Pine64 is another one to look at for software support. It's not immediate as they don't design the chips, but they do work on mainline Linux support for their products. The PinePhone Pro and Pinebook Pro both using the RK3399 SoC is pretty well supported by mainline now, so you can run mainline Linux the not-Raspberry Pi boards with RK3399s (Orange Pi 4, Rock Pi 4). Armbian probably the one to provide updated installs.

Pine64's newer QuartzPro64 board uses an RK3588, so I hope to see good mainline support there too as the Orange Pi 5 and Rock 5 (no longer a Pi) use the same SoC.

https://wiki.pine64.org/wiki/QuartzPro64_Development#Upstrea...

> two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now

You still get support 6 months after release? Last time I bought an <other-fruit>Pi it came with a kernel that was already 2 years out of date on the day it was built (including binary blob proprietary drivers which only worked with that version), and that was it...

> Sure, buy some <other-fruit>Pi, two years go by, the latest available linux version is 1.5 years old now, no new software support, no new kernels, no nothing. Sometimes it's even impossible to download the image in the first place.

You searched in the wrong place. Board vendors give us something to play with,but they're not a community and we should never rely on their distros as they'll stop any development or support when a new model appears, which isn't a problem at all. Distros with recent, very often mainline, kernels do exist also for boards not produced anymore, just look at Armbian and DietPI.

Armbian Debian for the Odroid C2 (out of production) with a kernel that is newer than the one running on the laptop I'm writing this post with.

https://imola.armbian.com/dl/odroidc2/archive/Armbian_22.11....

Armbian Debian Bullseye for OrangePI PC (out of production) with pretty recent kernel.

https://imola.armbian.com/dl/orangepipc/archive/Armbian_22.1...

DietPI Debian Bookworm for NanoPI M1 (out of production), no version data but Bookworm is the latest Debian release.

https://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiM1-ARMv7-Bo...

etc.

https://www.armbian.com/download/?device_support=Supported

https://dietpi.com/#download

I can understand a RasPI user saying "but I can download the OS image on the RasPI site!". That's true, and I concur it's very handy especially for newbies who find a common place in which they can do everything, but that's more an anomaly than the norm. Would we go for example to Asus, Dell, Fujitsu, etc. websites to download a Linux distribution for our shiny new laptop? Nope, we rather head to Debian, Arch, SuSE, Manjaro, Alpine, etc. sites. That's exactly what we should do with embedded boards. The problem isn't that other boards than the Raspberry PI do not have updated software, but rather that those who provide it aren't popular as they deserve.

I wouldn't try to build a product on anything that depends on an SD card for storage.

They have industrial-focused pi boards in a memory/dimm-slot format that have on board flash.

A company I was at used it in a product for the rapid prototyping capability.

With a good quality power supply, SD card and a battery backup, that's not too problematic. Most people however either cheap out on these or they get fakes, which is a problem on its own.

You should NOT use writable FS (except for a specialized one on a separate partition/device for user settigs) even with EMMC! And then you don't need battery backup.

Using writable rootfs goes against industry practices and is a disaster waiting to happen... like the one with emmc in Tesla's central panels.

At least some Kobos use SD cards for their storage.

My hardware reliability case:

- the network card of my first Pi (some 2 model) failed

- a PI Zero completely died years ago

- a PI Zero 2 W doesn't boot anymore but it apparently powers on

- a number of SD cards failed after months of use, but that's to be expected. I turn off swap and don't write log files much [1]

I'm left with a couple of PI 3 but I don't have a use case for them anymore and frankly the unavailability of the product doesn't make me feel like investing on it. It's becoming a kind of retrocomputing.

I switched to Odroid HC4 to build a NAS with it's two SATA slots. I can recycle a ton of disks I put in a drawer along the years. It's about 4 W with the disks off, plus whatever a disk consumes: 2 W for a 2.5 1 TB HDD and 9 W for an older 750 GB 3.5 HDD. I have other disks to test.

[1] https://ostechnix.com/how-to-write-log-files-in-ram-using-lo...

Edit: actually I'm using a PI 3 with a TV Hat to stream free to air TV to my phones and tablets around the home. I'm never sitting in front of the TV set.

Thought it was me but out of 3 Pis I had all of them died rather sooner than later… To make things worse I barely used two of them. The only one I’ve got left is still randomly losing HDMI signal, I never know if I’ll be able to see anything when connecting it to any kind of display. Another one just stopped working all of sudden after just a year of working as a weather station. The third one sat in a drawer for a year and a half and wouldn’t run once I got it out.

Are we that unlucky or they’re so unreliable? Not a single electronic product failed me so often in the last 30 years.