I have not had any problems related to USB with my B+, except that one time I directly connected a device that uses the USB power for charging - the screen went

I have not had any problems related to USB with my B+, except that one time I directly connected a device that uses the USB power for charging - the screen went blinking black (not enough power for HDMI?), and the red power led blinked a bit (meaning, inadequate power supply/too much demand) but no kernel panics or reboots. I have since bought a more powerful power supply, it's possible that the problem is gone (but I have not checked). Ethernet is as fast as you'd expect from a Ethernet-over-USB-2.0 adapter (read: no Gbit, but 100 Mbps). Plugging and unplugging USB devices has never caused kernel panics or reboots for me, and for the model B I recall reading these problems have been corrected, or at least significantly attenuated, a lot of time ago, in the form of kernel updates. Stability also has a lot to do with the quality of the power supply - from what I see, people using less powerful power supplies tend to have more problems, especially when connecting power-hungry devices. I think calling such problems "major bugs" is exaggerated. At most, it's a power management problem, but one must see that the RasPi has a microUSB connector for power. This means people are possibly going to use a random charger, which is not exactly prepared to power a mini-computer plus two (or four, with the B+) possibly hungry devices, to power it. That's why a powered hub, or at least a good power supply, is recommended. In my opinion, the BeagleBone Black is, from the start, less prone to "power abuse", because it has a traditional power jack (people are less likely to use a random USB charger with it) and only one USB port (it's harder to pull a lot of power from a single port, unless a non-powered hub is used). The amount of people using the BeagleBone is, I think, also going to be much smaller: even if the chance of failure is the same as for a RasPi, there will be less broken devices around. Lastly, the people using the BeagleBone will likely be much more tech-savvy (i.e., they hopefully will know what power supply to use, for example), as it doesn't exactly appear to be targeted at people still learning the basics about computers and coding.