pen2l actually you are wrong, because it runs full Linux, but also it's PRECISELY the thing that makes this so attractive to so many people: the fact that it's

pen2l actually you are wrong, because it runs full Linux, but also it's PRECISELY the thing that makes this so attractive to so many people: the fact that it's a full, normal, desktop, Linux PC. That gives it amazing possibilities. You can prototype on a laptop (running Linux) and just move your code, AS-IS, over to a 1 GHz Linux Desktop with 512 MB of RAM: the Raspberry Pi Zero that is pictured. Now you are correct that it's not capable of running Windows. Even the Linux that it runs is a version that doesn't support everything that a desktop version supports. (Like Photoshop etc.) It's extremely underpowered for a desktop, and not every Linux package supports its architecutre, though most do. So it's a complete PC in the sense that it can run desktop Linux applications - you can surf the web on it - write emails, do whatever you want, and you won't be using special embedded versions of applications. But for that usage it is also radically underpowered. Hard to understand what else someone might expect from a $5 computer on a chip, though, when a typical desktop costs $250-$500. The specs I listed are absolutely remarkable, but in a real desktop you use on your desk you would want 8 times as much RAM (4 GB) at a minimum, or even 64 times as much ram (16 GB). I mean if you're advising your friends. This is more about experimentation for applications where you embed a small PC. If your friend doesn't have much of a budget, I suggest they get a used PC. This PC is about as powerful as a desktop PC from over fifteen years ago. (Which they could also get, and still run some desktop applications on.)