I have a cluster of 3 of the Orange Pi 5 Pros. They're extremely capable machines if you don't need the GPU or NPU (which I don't). That being said, they're more expensive, louder, and less energy efficient than like an Intel N100 mini PC.

This.

If power draw isn't critical, an N95/N100/N150 x86 wins out every time on OS support and price point. Especially when you factor in an SSD, thermal handling, case, power supply...

I give OrangePi a lot of points for putting an M.2 slot on the bottom of the PCB. Not only does Raspberry Pi charge extra for their M.2 board, it sits in an obnoxious location above the board where it interferes with many other things one might want to put on top, e.g. any sort of passive cooling.

> I looked it up rapidly and couldn't figure out the difference with the original OrangePi 5.

RK3588S -> RK3588, LPDDR4 -> LPDDR5

There is also one in between - the plus. Rk3588 but ddr4

Thanks. Does it make a big difference in practice?

A non-Broadcom SoC and actually fast network? Absolutely better than any Raspberry Pi

The built-in ethernet controller would be fine, not sure why it needs to use up some PCIe lanes on an external one.

Assuming you can get software support for more than one version of 'blessed' distro.

Well, that’s my point exactly: mainline kernel is what all distros eventually use.

As a matter of fact I’m currently running an OrangePi 5 as a server using an unmodified Debian Trixie and hardware support is nearly perfect.

Could you be more specific about what's not perfect yet with the hardware support?