Seeking advice on ARM boards

[doragasu]

Hi guys!

I have a file server running on a RPi3, and I am really annoyed because of the poor I/O performance of this board. So I want to replace it with a better performing one. But there are so many boards that I am a bit lost about which one to buy. These are my requirements:

• Mainline (upstream) kernel support. I will be installing Archlinux and I do not want to be locked to the kernel and drivers prebuilt for the board.
• Gigabit Ethernet with decent performance. No more boards with Ethernet connected through USB full-speed sharing the same host with all other USB devices, please.
• RPi form factor.
• Price in the RPi range.
• GPIOs
• 1 GiB RAM (I will not be installing Xorg, so maybe I could even live with 512 MiB).

Having USB 3.0 Super Speed or eSATA interface would be a plus, but I do not really need them.

I have been digging the net, and the two possibilities closest to my requirements I could find are:

• AML-S905X-CC (Le Potato) and the cut-down version (Le Frite). Unfortunately, they do have Fast Ethernet (no Gigabit).
• ROC-RK3328-CC (Renegade). Unfortunately, it does not seem to support upstream Linux.

Any other suggestion? I suppose the mainline kernel support is a challenge for most of this boards, but maybe there is something out there...

[doragasu]

Well, it seems I will have to continue with my RPi some more time ^_^