OpenSUSE Tumbleweed uses a fairly “upstream” kernel, afaik, but in the meantime I am trying out other distributions to see what the experience will be like and that is quite enjoyable in itself. I have an Ethernet cable plugged in so I can wait for the wireless stuff.
The thing that worried me was that I replaced the stock pigtails with shorter ones. I’ve never done that before so I wasn’t sure that I had assembled everything correctly. As Tumbleweed blocked the interfaces there was no way of knowing if the hardware was working properly.
But trying other distributions (Debian and Armbian) erased that worry. The hardware works fine and communicates with the router and Bluetooth peripherals the way they are supposed to. In fact, the reception of the wireless is the best I’ve ever had on a device. Very happy about that.
So I guess I can wait for now and report on the progress as it happens on the openSUSE side of things.