Are you sure? I've worked with a myriad of ARM devices, and I would say that despite their small size, Hardkernel are one of the most responsive companies when I have had issues.
Hardware vendors hardly are the best sources for OS images, except maybe for very new boards. When I shop for a board I always look if it is supported by community driven projects such as Armbian, DietPI or even plain Debian.
Im excited to look at the wifi on the RP4! Any word on the chipset used for that?
On a more personal note - thank you for your service.
You got any advice for pulling the aircrack_ng/rtl8812au driver from github and making it into a patch for building in-kernel? I really like having signed-module verification, but I also really want this driver.
The credits at the end of the post thank folks who worked on the CYW43455 integration, which matchs up with the raspberry expectation of being a (former) Broadcom part.