The newest ESP32 can run Linux and it's getting close to a Raspberry Pi

Espressif’s new ESP32-S31 is a much more capable microcontroller that brings SBC-style peripherals and a true RISC-V MMU to the ESP32 family. Hardware highlights include a gigabit Ethernet MAC over RGMII with PHY and RJ45, a USB 2.0 High-Speed OTG Type-A host (500 mA), dual SD card slots via SDIO, an 8-16-bit DVP camera interface, a 24-bit-capable parallel LCD controller, two 320 MHz RISC-V cores (each with an FPU and one with a 128-bit SIMD path), a 40 MHz low-power core, 512 KB on-chip SRAM, up to 256 MB flash and PSRAM support (practical in-package variants of 16/32 MB and a theoretical 64 MB max). Crucially, the cores implement Sv32 two-level paging and Machine/Supervisor/User privilege modes, which allowed Espressif to publish a Buildroot/U-Boot Linux BSP and enabled community ports running mainline kernels (6.18/7.1) with working drivers and even an 800×480 console.

Shortcomings keep it on the microcontroller side: RAM is limited (kernel is typically executed from flash to conserve PSRAM), there’s no DRAM controller, no GPU/NPU, and multimedia acceleration is modest (JPEG and 2D). At 320 MHz the CPU may struggle to saturate small-packet gigabit traffic despite decent PSRAM bandwidth, and documentation is still preliminary. Radios (Wi‑Fi 6, Bluetooth 5.4 including Classic, 802.15.4) and low-power behavior are strong for the class, so while it cannot replace a Raspberry Pi as a desktop, it’s a significant step toward running useful Linux workloads on an ESP32-class device.