Armbian 22.02 has been released

Well what you describe is non-trivial, and thus is essentially the /raison d'être/ for Armbian in the first place. Most vendors just want to sell hardware, doing the absolute minimum software development possible, because that costs money.

Perhaps more accurately, individuals (and some companies) here and there (i.e., "the community") have been doing this mainlining work slowly but steadily for years to improve the situation. Armbian does some of it, too.

So, things have slowly improved over the 9 years Armbian have been in action. Mainline is becoming more expected, we even worked with some vendors to implement it for a few boards. So, increasing end user awareness and pressure on vendors I think is helping in this regard.

A few vendors lately are beginning to go to the trouble to use UEFI instead of u-boot for example, but that requires more work on their part to implement, which is why you see less of it. But that's why we are starting to support that.