Peter Scargill

Just wondering when an image will be available for the R5S  - I have one here sitting waiting for it 🙂

I agree - the Pi for me is the "main" unit of this type - as everyone else has copied the name Pi - and they have masses of support - so to me all other systems should attempt where possible, compatibility in addition to their own unique offerings.  So in my script I make a user Pi and add that user to a load of groups.  As you'll see here...   http://tech.scargill.net/the-friendlyarm-nanopi-neo/ the Friendlyarm people have Ubuntu which is of no interest to me -  as a Pi user I wanted Debian - as near to Raspian as possible - well, Armbian is a great start from what I can see - I have it installed - and thanks to readers I now have normal (pi) user control over GPIO - suitable for Node-Red (though no-where near as good as having the GPIO nodes in Node-Red running natively).  I've a couple of pins I've no idea why I can't access them but I have the bulk of them.  Being able to use them for PWM and I2c as one can do EASILY on the Pi without root access, would make these boards a lot better - after all, with a Pi3 for £29 - for me just about the only reason to use alternatives is cost. The FriendlyArm M1 and NEO seem great little boards and cheap - and now I have Node-Red etc running on both (as you'll see in the blog) - but more control over the GPIO would be marvelous without having to guess which pin maps to what.
 
Here for example  -http://abyz.co.uk/rpi/pigpio/ a great library for the Raspberry Pi - with gpio, PWM, I2c etc. Surely this is the kind of thing that should be readily available in the other boards too.
 
Oh, my blog - and the NEO...   http://tech.scargill.net/the-friendlyarm-nanopi-neo/