TI (manufacturer of the core on the BeagleBone line) has much better Linux support than the generic SoC makers out of Asia.

https://git.ti.com/sitara-linux

Literally the first repository in that list is their kernel: a 3.14.26 tree. The 3.14 tree was tagged fully THREE YEARS ago. 3.14 is not a LTS release, and its last patch version (.26) was released in December of 2014. It's likely missing a bunch of important fixes that went into the 3.16 LTS tree since. I don't see anywhere on that site where they're maintaining a more recent "development" or "upstreaming" kernel either. They just have this one tree.

So given that, tell me what you think the likelihood is of these Sitara changes ever reaching the mainline kernel tree? Zero? I'll put my money on zero.

"Much better" than Rockchip or Allwinner maybe. Not "good".

If you look into it they (beagle probably? Rather than TI) actually employed a guy (rcn-ee) who spent a lot of time getting various beaglebone code including the support for capes (basically dynamic hardware loading - something previously relatively not done in ARM - there are no busses like PCIE) - that took some 3 years because of the mess of support in Linux and getting it done in a "Linux"/upstream happy way.

So it might be better than you think but in general this is still a problem in the entire space. But as best I can tell the beagle guys are way ahead of most on this.

google rcn-ee for more info and forgive any inaccuracies in my recollection above.

Yeah, linking to the Sitara repo probably wasn't the best example.

Here's another TI repo where they're at 4.4.32: https://git.ti.com/processor-sdk

Release notes (dated 12/2016): http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/Processor_SDK_Linux_...

it's supported by mainline kernel. it's probably the best supported cheap open hardware of its sort out there. every datasheet for each chip on the beaglebone black is freely available and it can run with no proprietary blobs, unlike the raspberry pi. it's even supported by the *bsds.

Really? Genuine question. Is there a link where I can find someone's .config for a current mainline kernel I can boot? I swear I'll buy one of these right now if so.

Note that "no blobs" can't be completely right. I'm like 99% confident these use PVR SGX graphics, for which there are no open drivers.

Yes. Robert Nelson maintains the kernel and various accoutrements for the BeagleBone Line, and he is fantastic.

Start here:

http://elinux.org/Beagleboard:BeagleBoneBlack_Debian

I disagree. They ask money for their product (€160-€200) which provides me with confidence that they will be around for some time.

Their distro is a pre-configured raspbian, so you do have an upgrade path. Their board is supported by ArduPilot upstream.

https://github.com/mirkix/BBBMINI an ArduPilot Cape for the BeagleBone.

'tarball flinger'?