I hope that the situation improves with Imagintion and open source
drivers. We at BeagleBoard.org have lobbied for this with our
contacts but we ourselves don't necessarily have the market influence
to make that happen. I agree there are positive signs like that
Phoronix post, but ultimately we will have to see what Imagination
actually does.
As for the BeagleV, we should be able to offer PCIe connector when the
StarFive 7110 SoC is ready (not the beta board which has 7100 SoC)
which means it will be possible to add a GPU with upstream support
like Radeon RX580 such as what SiFive has done with the Unmatched
board: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z6lkLfDga1U&feature=youtu.be
-Drew