[RL_Quine]

They usually perform well, but get put in a drawer and forgotten about because the software compatibility is generally atrocious. Peripherals advertised generally never work, but you know, might in a future kernel. I've been burned enough that I've sworn to never buy a SBC no matter the specifications.

[woodruffw]

That's good to know, thanks. I've had pretty good luck over the years with ordinary RPis (I keep a couple around for random projects); the most serious problem I ever have with them is the long-standing one around slow SD card corruption.

[RL_Quine]

The RPI is sort of the exception; I have a couple of them doing odd tasks around the house like displaying security cameras, but that's an outlier due to the massive amount of support it gets.

In boxes in the basement are all sorts of SBCs, from the original A10 Cubieboard from 2012, to many Hardkenel boards, to all sorts of bizarre barely operational SBCs from various sources. They all had the same issue of being basically unsupported unless you made it your life goal to dig through obscure datasheets and compile kernel patches from some forum post you found.

A good holistic replacement for the RPI is the APU2, a x86 board of similar cost that has a bunch more peripherals, real support for booting from SATA, ECC memory, and that sort of thing. Absolutely no video support, but I have years of uptime on the things with no issue.

[Xymist]

Worth noting that by "of a similar cost" you mean the insane scalper prices (£175), not the £35 a Raspberry Pi ought to cost.

[woleium]

Mount SDs with "noatime" option :)

[iforgotpassword]

Thinking about how much ewaste all those clone sbcs must amount to makes me sad. I fell for some pi zero clone too about three years ago and it ended up the same. Meanwhile my original pi (the 512mb variant) is still running Kodi on my main TV.