[kogepathic]

> I wish there was some sort of regulatory label put on these devices (or boards) that would clearly state how many years of support they would commit to.

As someone who owns a Raspberry Pi, PandaBoard, BananaPi, Orange Pi, and Intel DK200 I've learned this important life lesson:

Always assume that the most support you'll ever receive for the board is on the day you buy it.

Apart from the Raspberry Pi, no one else gives half a shit to fix bugs or even provide distro updates for their hardware.

Cheap Chinese boards are even worse for this. They'll typically take the SoC kernel (an ancient version several years out of date with the worst patches you've ever seen) and roll some shitty old distro around it (e.g. Ubuntu 14.04, Android 4.4).

A good recommendation for people looking to buy a board is to look at the Armbian [0] or Arch Linux ARM [1] supported hardware (read the notices!!!) and buy that.

[0] http://armbian.com

[1] https://archlinuxarm.org/