It'd be really nice if the Single Board Computer Database[0] let you search for boards with all their hardware support in upstream Linux and not requiring some shitty 2014 bespoke kernel that advertises "upstream-quality code that'll be merged soon" on a wiki from 2014.
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96boards.org/product/dragon ($75 + a generic power supply) is probably the best generic choice as it's very popular and has good mainline kernel support. It even has a working open source GPU driver (freedreno). I think there are only firmware blobs left, which is unavoidable.
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96boards.org/product/uartse is also a nice little edition if you don't want to make your own debug cable. It's neat that they have the standard versioned form factors (board layout, port location, etc.) and a standard extension system (96boards.org/products/mezza).
I've used HiKey and HiKey 960 to work on Android development with the ability to use the most recent LTS kernels, since they're officially supported by AOSP and the Android common kernel branches. They've worked well. Only complaint is HiKey 960 gets too hot with their heatsink.