Yep, I was close to buying a BeagleBoard when the RPi was announced, and I went with the Pi instead. At the time, the BeagleBoard was the more powerful and entr

Yep, I was close to buying a BeagleBoard when the RPi was announced, and I went with the Pi instead. At the time, the BeagleBoard was the more powerful and entrenched option, and it was fine for experts, but it was a non-starter for beginners. That's the magic formula the RPi Foundation put together: Cheap (basically loss-leader), easy to understand and bootstrap, and fully supported by the creators. I get that the Pi is looked down upon by some because of the closed nature of its GPU, but most of the other SBC/SoC manufacturers are also releasing closed source boards and some are even violating the GPL. I believe Bunnie Huang's Novena is the only 100% open source (hardware and software) dev board on the market today.