Thanks for the clear tutorial for RPi - would have saved me a lot of time if I knew about it before! I will check out Arch but I've actually been using stock Raspian with my CM1s and have no problems at all.
Unfortunately though due to this "unless you give us free hardware" policy I can no longer use cgminer with my CM1s so have had to switch camps to the BFGminer which remains open and cooperative with any hardware manufacturer. I understand that you want to test hardware directly but many people have offered to debug, provide you whatever info you need, and even provide remote access to systems with miners - yet it seems you actually just want free hardware

If that's your commercial model, then I get it - just wish I knew upfront before buying into cgminer.
CGMiner used to work like a dream, then they rewrote the USB stack and broke it (but is much more efficient for those it works for) - and now won't fix it because nobody gave kano a free CM1. Cautionary tale - other miners are available ;-)
It takes a lot to develop and maintain software, and best way of getting things fixed fast and correct is to have the actual hardware instead of creating lots of debug versions to get people around to try, and sending info back and forth before software is finished.