[Nanite]

I have both Raspberry Pi's and a few of the cheap "clones". So some takeaways:

The good: they're definitely cheaper, I paid about a third of the raspberry Pi 2 price for a comparable Orange Pi. Other models seem to have similar aggressive pricing.

The bad: Armbian distros are a mixed bag, I had the impression some of them were put together by developers who didn't even have the particular board on hand. I spent a good three hours just getting WiFi to work (not being familiar with linux didn't help either though) , while putting up with an invisible cursor editing config files. Setting up a raspberry pi zero W in comparison was 5 minutes. Also I found out later that the pin header was 180 degrees rotated compared to the Raspberry, which made it not compatible with standard hats.

In retrospect I did learn a lot, and the Orange Pi has been running without issue for 2 years now. But Raspberry's have my definite preference.

[sdenton4]

It would be cool if one of the big distros head a test suite for SBCs. The knowledge that the pi is well rested and supported is probably the biggest thing holding me with them. Well, and I think they're a really great organization which has driven a lot of innovation. But knowing that I might spend three hours screwing around with WiFi definitely keeps me from even trying out competitors.