I was able to get one last summer. Since then it has been even easier to get, albeit this was from Germany and it was not marked up in price but from a standard electronics retailer
Someone eventually manages to buy a RPi, but you were that lucky one as the RPis are still almost unobtanium almost everywhere. However, a RPi is just the most famous and heavily advertised one among the many Linux capable embedded boards out there, therefore pretty much every project using one can be converted to a similar board from another vendor.
Some alternatives:
https://mangopi.org/mcorer818
https://banana-pi.org/en/core-board-and-kit/
https://pine64.com/product-category/compute-and-ai-modules/
etc.