Raspberry Pi boards are no longer constrained – these days, you can get a quad-core board with 8 or 16GB of RAM to go around, equip it with a heatsink, and get a decently comfortable shop/desk/kitchen ...
The Raspberry Pi series of boards are noted for their good software support, with a continuous flow of operating system upgrades such that an original Pi from 2012 will still boot the latest Pi OS.
There's no shortage of operating systems you can try on a Raspberry Pi. These include general-purpose distros like Ubuntu and Fedora that are ideal for desktop and server use, as well as more niche ...