Beagle has a pretty large community. They've been around longer than the Raspberry Pi. The RPi because of it's super low cost has proliferated greatly and enabl

Beagle has a pretty large community. They've been around longer than the Raspberry Pi. The RPi because of it's super low cost has proliferated greatly and enabled people to get in and try out stuff they wouldn't be able to before. Which has always been their goal, to build an educational tool. If you are just fiddling around and mostly are looking to have something that's a lot like your linux experience. Either will work and it might be easier to find a specific github project for what you're doing on the RPi, but that is barely my usual experience. Even something like running a MAME cab on an RPi3, you'll get set up quick with RetroPi, but some things you might want to play won't hack it on the little CPU in there. Any one of these is a great entry point, but it is definitely advisable to jump into your new project by seeing what people are using and picking the board. If your idea is even slightly left of mainstream you'll probably test out quite a few. More than likely, if you didn't have EE skills before you start, you'll hit some hard walls with esoteric choices like SPI vs I2C, or the best way to do wireless communication and not gobble your battery. Long and short, embedded projects don't quite silo like software. You might start out thinking about your Pi like buying a netbook, then four years later you're doing embedded C on a 16-bit proc to get where you're going. Even just a few years ago this would be totally inaccessible to anyone without very specific experience (usually a degree). Now for a dollar, anyone can fiddle and grow an idea and the tools have become amazing! But just because it runs an ubuntu flavor and has a familiar window manager, doesn't mean people didn't make real specific choices to get it into that tiny package and you'll have to figure out what you really need as you go.