Well, my experience started with reading about the bad official images for the Orange Pis in general. After trying out various official and also some from here: http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=342
I finally read about Armbian and although it felt a bit patchy it worked rather well. It improved very fast. At the beginning it didn't seem to use the swap, but now it does, which is important when trying to use the pi as a Desktop, since 512MB RAM is rather thight. But the biggest advantage of armbian is specific for the OPi One. Since most images are originally for the OPi PC, the FEX settings file is not adjusted for the different voltage regulators of the One. Armbian is basically the only Distro with correct settings by default, see last abstract here: https://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_One
In addition to Armbian, which is definitely the by far best Distro for the Orange Pis, I can recommend the (as far as I know Armbian-based) DietPi. Setup and configuration of various applications and also the OS itself is easier than on Armbian.
Well, my experience started with reading about the bad official images for the Orange Pis in general. After trying out various official and also some from here:
http://www.orangepi.org/orangepibbsen/forum.php?mod=viewthread&tid=342
I finally read about Armbian and although it felt a bit patchy it worked rather well. It improved very fast. At the beginning it didn't seem to use the swap, but now it does, which is important when trying to use the pi as a Desktop, since 512MB RAM is rather thight. But the biggest advantage of armbian is specific for the OPi One. Since most images are originally for the OPi PC, the FEX settings file is not adjusted for the different voltage regulators of the One. Armbian is basically the only Distro with correct settings by default, see last abstract here:
https://linux-sunxi.org/Xunlong_Orange_Pi_One