[dual_dingo]

I haven't closely monitored the situation for years now, but it used to be the case that OS/software support for anything than a Raspi was often spotty at best.

With a Raspi, you not only have Raspian/RPiOS that fully supports all models back to the first one from 2011, but a decent number of really good alternatives like Fedora, Ubuntu and special appliance variants, e.g. for console emulation etc.

In contrast, my last experiments with some other SBCs consisted of downloading some ancient ISO files of questionable provenance from some shady .cn domains. It might have gotten better, but one should carefully investigate the software situation before buying a non-RPi SBC.

[icelancer]

This is getting significantly better and fast - largely due to RPis being unavailable for 2 years and growing (and won't get better anytime soon). Odroid's ecosystem is quite a bit better these days. I highly recommend getting an XU-4 from Ameridroid or HardKernel themselves (my last order arrived within 10 days from South Korea to the west coast with zero customers issues) for a fraction of the RPi 4 MSRP cost (much less what it actually costs now) and tinker.

[fragmede]

It depends on your level of expertise and how comfortable you are straying from an online guide. It's just a small matter of computer engineering, for different difficulty values of "just".