In the category of SBC's, it's pretty much the only one that has good software support, not outdated images made with a bunch of kernel patches for a specific kernel version.

This is certainly the reputation but I'm not sure they deserve it. They've always had the horrible closed-source bootloader with threadx running on the gpu, without a free alternative. At least up to pi4 they weren't bad at linux mainlining, but progress on upstreaming pi5 support has been glacial.

Cf. the various Beagle boards which have mainline linux and u-boot support right from release, together with real open hardware right down to board layouts you can customise. And when you come to manufacture something more than just a dev board, you can actually get the SoC from your normal distributor and drop it on your board - unlike the strange Broadcom SoCs rpi use.

I'm quite a lot more positive about rp2040 and rp2350, where they've at least partially broken free of that Broadcom ball-and-chain.