I work developing for the Pi and assuming that any of the SD cards would survive in a Pi environment is just a terrible idea. They get corrupted extremely frequently, both in hardware and filesystem level.
Hardware level is because most brands just don't use chips good enough to handle the IO of a "desktop" OS, even if it's slow like the Pi.
Software level is because the Pi is highly unstable hardware and freezes frequently, plus the tiny micro USB port for powering gets unplugged surprisingly often. Random poweroffs and reboots just asks for corruption on Linux filesystems.
You say you develop for the RPi, can I ask you what kind of development do you do and if you have any numbers to back up your claims?
I have deployed 3 RPis as digital signage systems. They work flawlessly for over a year now. I use another one as a home server for DNSmasq/VPN/etc. No issue and has more than 30 days uptime.
I share your views on SDCards but I don't consider the RPi 'unstable' by any means, although the SD cards get easily corrupted.
I had a 'bifferboard' (extremely small board) and an eBox2230. I know what unstable looks like, and the RPi is the most stable mini-PC at that I've seen so far.
I will say that I've had similar experiences. I wouldn't have a pi that does a large amount of reading/writing for a mission critical task. I have one pi, that I'm not sure if it's a hardware issue or what, but I've got to the point of just restarting it every 6 hours, if I don't, it hard freezes.
I've also already ruined one (admittedly, cheaper no name brand) SD card on another raspberry pi. That one went after 2 weeks of hard usage. I now have an ever growing collection of SD cards (4 gig cards are too small for more than basic uses of the raspberry, even 8 gigs can be a bit limiting)
That said, the raspi's are fun, but I wouldn't trust the SD cards on them with something like this.
I am now using the SD Card only for booting the system and run everything of a USB flash drive following this [1] HOWTO. Since I rarely reboot my Pi, the SD card barely gets used.
I never had the SD card corruption issues before, but I moved to this option just in case. I don't see the instability issues you talk about either but we're probably giving the Pi different uses...
Are there any standard RPi images which mount the majority/entirety of the system read-only? Overlay schemes are standard on many platforms like routers.
Used to have a lot of trouble with my RPi getting corrupted (fixed with a new power supply). And rather than spend any time trying to make everything read-only in software I figured I'd just use the "lock" switch on the sd card. That was when I discovered that the lock didn't actually do anything.
I can't support your experience either. I have about 9 Pi in the field for 1-2 years, as well as some sheevaplugs. they rarely freeze and the sds hold their belongings together in general.
