I wonder if the limitation of the application processor and Linux starting is mostly a default for the standard OS or an actual limitation. Typically with a hybrid SoC like this part of the point is that you can use the micro-controller as the power efficient thing that decides when the bigger application processor should boot or not. I'd be curious to see if that's possible with this one.

Shipping only Debian to start is fine by me. It has to start somewhere. And they seem quite responsive to making it work with other things. James Harton is plugging away at getting it working with Nerves (https://nerves-project.org) and he has it running with Buildroot already. Current repo: https://github.com/jimsynz/buildroot

Most recently they pushed their special sauce for the bootloader and how to produce the relevant mystery binaries. https://forum.arduino.cc/t/buildroot-support-for-uno-q/14108...

I share the sentiment that I don't trust that there won't be issues with Qualcomm over time. That company does have some pretty relevant chips though so I'm hopeful this means that we see them become more accessible on SBCs and embedded boards. I feel like they've been popping up more and more.

If they value this investment in Arduino they should now have a small wing of the company that pushes for things to be more open and even if they only consider that a marketing vector, if things are opened up for that purpose, quite possibly a win. But Arduino might also be absorbed into the amorphous megablob and this is the last we see. I hope not.

I don't think this board is that weird. It is just coming from the Arduino side and moving into Raspberry Pi territory. Personally I want to run Nerves on the application processor and get some practice with Zephyr on the MCU. Seems to already be supported: https://docs.zephyrproject.org/latest/boards/arduino/uno_q/d...

Also why no mention of the LED matrix. This is something RPi devices fail at. Providing som default way of neat output. First time plugging this in it starts doing fun stuff.