[okanat]

RPis get sold more to the businesses and startups that started with them in 2010s, rather than hobbyists now.

If you cannot negotiate a good deal with the big industrial silicon manufacturers but you want good up-to-date kernels, RPis are a perfect option.

There are SoMs or SBCs with other CPUs like NXP or MediaTek that has more or less mainline support. However, they ask more money. The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel issues that the CPU and the board manufacturer missed.

[05]

There are also lots of cheaper SoMs if you're not allergic to Chinese chipsets, and the cheaper ones tend to have PoP on-package DDR so you can spin your own 4-layer PCB without having to pull your hair out impedance matching DDR3+ traces. That, of course, if you can fit into ~64MB RAM.

> The kernel contributions are also a bit on the shakier side which requires spending expensive developer time to deal with kernel

NXP/i.MX are way better at mainline kernel than Broadcom that RPi is based on, come on.. and they have cheaper options like i.MX 9 series. Other vendors, yes, mainline support could be pretty spotty.