Depends what you mean by “ecosystem”. If you’re at the level of a hobbyist who’s considers a blog post, Hackaday project, or YouTube tutorial about setting up s

Depends what you mean by “ecosystem”. If you’re at the level of a hobbyist who’s considers a blog post, Hackaday project, or YouTube tutorial about setting up some server or building some type of project part of the ecosystem, then the difference between the size and accessibility of the RPi and its competitors is staggering. Sure, for any one project an alternative _may_ be the right solution, especially if you’re spending serious time on it, but when you’re constantly creating little projects and proto-projects, many of which involve little more than copying from a few blog posts, writing a bit of code for an evening or two, and deciding not to go much further, it is just SO much less risky in terms of time and probability of major hiccups to start out on an RPi. Plus, if you’re like me there’s probably one lying around somewhere so you get instant gratification and zero incremental cost to give it a try, which is often the difference between scratching the itch and not on that particular project.