I had a good experience with Armbian, it was my first time modifying a linux distro with extra packages so that we didn't have to run install scripts and compil

I had a good experience with Armbian, it was my first time modifying a linux distro with extra packages so that we didn't have to run install scripts and compile on the orange pi (actually I started looking at how to build armbian because the build step for python's crypto module would fail after cranking away for an hour. Not enough memory or something timed out. Anyway running the armbian build process with a target cpu architecture was a breeze following their docs)