[ilyt]

That's my experience with many alternatives, basically nothing (INCLUDING rPi) is just supported in mainline, but rPi's patched version of Debian is well supported unlike the alternatives.

If just for playing around paying extra for pi just to have something that works makes a lot of sense.

[PlutoIsAPlanet]

You can install the mainline ARM UEFI builds of Debian onto the RPi and install it like a regular PC.

I've not been able to find any other SBC that is able to do that.