[Kadin]

I agree with everything except I don't think I would have called out OrangePi as the worst of the lot -- at least not anymore.

They seem to have basically outsourced their software maintenance to Armbian, and if that relationship holds it's probably a win-win. Armbian's build system is really nice, IMO.

FriendlyElec are borderline; they make nice hardware but definitely seem to take a "here's a kernel we got to boot once, good luck!" attitude towards software support. Some of their boards are supported by Armbian but often without key features due to lack of documentation or binary blobs.

Below that is a vast sea of largely-anonymous Chinese-based hardware companies who drop a design (sometimes really neat) into the world, then disappear without a trace. Mostly I think these are designs whipped up quickly to use up spare parts, or originally designed for embedded use in a particular product and being sold on the side. (I've definitely seen 'development boards' that were clearly designed for security cameras or TV decoder boxes, f.ex.) But you are buying yourself a new hobby if you decide to get one.