I especially like the idea of getting a framework version in this case I want to swap in a different mainboard. By their own admission, the risc-v board is targeting developers and not ready for prime time. Also coming from the US, not sure how the tariff thing will workout…
RISC-V software ecosystem is really good already. It feels like everybody is just waiting for high performance CPU cores now. Sadly silicon cannot be built and released within seconds like software...
Better to buy a SBC for now (I can recommend the OrangePi RV2 - it's fantastic!) and wait until actually desktop/laptop-class hardware is ready :)
Or best buy something like https://www.crowdsupply.com/sutajio-kosagi/precursor or some other FPGA-based platform to retain the programmable logic capability, you never know whether you're going to need it, and should you need it after all, it helps knowing it's there.
Love FPGAs, but they're not very practical if you need to run a non-toy Linux on RISC-V. They will typically top out at 100 MHz for the kind of FPGAs that you and I can afford to buy, and have other problems like limited RAM.
Precursor just happens to use Xilinx Spartan 7-class, a 100 MHz VexRISC-V, RV32IMAC + MMU, 4k L1 I/D cache. But these days you could buy Versal devices with 1M+ LUT, and up to 100K DSP slices, in under a thou. However, integrating it—would be the real challenge. The FPGA hardware is sufficient for many non-toy Linux applications; open hardware isn't. This is a gateware limitation, not a hardware one.
