They seem uninterested in trying to get their hardware supported by submitting their patches for inclusion in the Linux kernel, and popular distros. Instead, you have to trust their repos (based in PRC).
I would never buy one of these things without upstream kernel support for the SoC and a sane bootloader. Even the Raspberry Pi is not great on this front TBH (kernel is mostly OK but the fucked up boot chain is a PITA, requires special distro support).