I wish everything was mainlined right away, too, but I’m realistic about what it takes to get that done.

There are chip providers that put more emphasis on mainline support but even those aren’t fully mainlined and their chips are generally much more expensive.

Is there a SOC you prefer, why? Linux support seems about on par with most?

Why is that? IME pretty much all of their software is a mess and the hardware has some bugs/issues iirc but is otherwise ok?