So, I decided to do a little bit more research before I pulled the trigger on buying a #Pine64 SBC, and I'm gonna be honest... it looks like a terrible idea.

The main issue are two things:

Compared to x86, it's a PITA to install an OS.
Driver support is very lacking (A lot of the roms don't even support output via HDMI!)

Because of those two reasons, I'm gonna go with the 2nd most popular choice in that poll, and get a core 2 duo system. For 35 dollars, I get a machine that comes with Wi-Fi, 2 gigs of ram, allows me to install any #linux or #bsd I want, and can be easily repaired and upgraded.

The #arm board on the other hand has only 2 gigs of soldered memory. I can only install certain images if I want decent hardware support, and it comes up to almost 100 dollars in total!!

I really hope #RISCV is going to be a lot simpler than these arm computers currently are, and hopefully cheaper too.

@charadon

Yeah the OS support isn't nearly as good as the boards made by the "We are unapologetically rude and snarky and if you don't like it you're obviously a part of a massive conspiracy against us" company. (I still love them, but *dang*, a little maturity goes a long way, ya know?!?)

Pine64 has actually shot themselves in the foot pretty badly by exclusively partnering with Manjaro. It turned off a lot of community developers.

@RL_Dane@fosstodon.org And the sad thing is, not even manjaro has mature hardware support from what I can tell.

And what's funny, is that all of this I wouldn't mind honestly, if it wasn't for the price tag attached to all this. It is, so so, expensive...

@charadon

Yeah, I don't know what to think about Manjaro. I have used it for four years now, and I'm planning to migrate to EndeavourOS really soon. It was probably the best Arch-based option for me when I got started back on linux (Antergos had just been discontinued), but now there's better options from orgs that don't publicly humiliate themselves every six months or so:

...