Quoted from Jazman:And that's the issue we've always said would exist with Nucore (which the Nucore guys love to push aside). It's only good as long as they're willing to maintain it. At some point, there will be some part of the current Linux distro (needed for newer hardware) that doesn't run with Nucore as coded.
Pinbox fixed all these issues. It configured Ubuntu "correctly" as the Nucore instructions configure things in a dangerous state if you were to ever add network connectivity. Not to mention it used old software, and the completely wrong distro. Pinbox is using a stripped down version of Ubuntu which means it's much lighter weight and boots significantly quicker. Also there are less stability and security issues because it's a much newer version of all the distro's software and there is much much less of it installed.
Obviously Nucore has 0 continuing support. As for Pinbox it seems as though it won't because of some sort of legal issue. But the way they packaged it makes that a moot point as upgrades to Pinbox wouldn't be nearly as damaging as to Nucore.
tl;dr The Nucore fellas were great engineers but definitely not sysadmins, Pinbox fixed all those problems though.