Having a few various RPi's (as one does), when they've been out of stock, I've looked into the huge variety of similar SBCs (OrangePi, etc) which can be even faster, with more ports and features for around the same money as an equivalent RPi. Many are powered by various RockChip SoCs, which extend up to desktop replacement-level, but the Linux driver support is usually lacking in some important way.
It's not Linux's fault, it's a small group of volunteers struggling with little manufacturer support or documentation. I don't get why RockChip doesn't budget the money in the business plan to fund full driver support for at least some of their more capable chips. I guess maybe too many of these chips are used in non-OS contexts to be worth it?
They have drivers in most of these cases; at a bare minimum the silicon was tested by the DV teams, and that generally includes running drivers.[0]
The issue is getting drivers upstreamed rather than just languishing in the vendor BSP.
And the answer for why they don't get upstreamed by the vendor is multifaceted. First off, the drivers in the vendor BSP are simply not at a quality level that would be accepted upstream. On top of that, even if they were at the quality needed, practically that coordination with upstream is a decent amount of work. Additionally, their customers don't really even care about upstream in the vast majority of cases, but instead prefer some vendor outdated fork billed to them as "stable".
[0] Apple for instance is rumored to have an internal Linux distro (or at least kernel fork) for DV of their Apple silicon chips to allow the hardware teams and macos teams to work with fewer cross department dependencies.
the biggest issue is that actually contributing to upstream is an *incredibly* difficult and painful process.
Tangential but related; when I used to work for BigCo, I would get old acquaintances message me on LinkedIn. They would act like they're really interested in my life and I'd interact, and then after a day or two they would ask me for a referral for a job, I'd do it, and then they wouldn't be all that interested in talking to me anymore.
I wouldn't have had a big problem if they had just messaged me and asked for the favor, but I do find it pretty irritating that they're pretending to be my friend just to get a favor. I don't need more friends, I have plenty. Hitting the "refer" button and uploading a resume takes ten seconds of work on my end, but wasting my time with a pretend conversation takes considerably longer.
Nowadays when I ask for a favor from a friend or acquaintance I pretty much immediately ask for it. I might still want to converse with them afterward, but I figure it's better to lay my intentions out on the table immediately so there's no false expectations.