Actually, you might be a good candidate for a raspberry pi. The 4s with the more ram are fairly acceptable. It is a slow moving but fairly solid distribution. You run into problems if you game a lot, but I don’t see you as that type.
I’ll look it up. I game zero. These hands were made to hold tools.
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Been only using Raspberries for about three or more years. The new Pi 400 might be of interest.
I like my 4. I use it to program Arduino/CTR Victor motor controllers for the robot test stations.
I love my RPi3b+ its OS runs all the legacy pi models too. The 4 is unique. I can write the scripts I need, quickly with the 3b+ and then just install the sd card in the older slower models. I have a remote controlled packet radio station run by a RPi A, and some py cams run by pizeros. All can be written with the 3b+.
Python ides (Thony and Idle3) are available free with the Raspbian OS. The Arduino IDE has been ported to Raspbian, and can be built from TAR.
You also can run Visual Studio Code on the 4 and it’s pretty fast. I have been able to access First robotics libraries and write a bit of a gradle for our robot.
The remarkable thing about a 3b+ is that, combined with the 7" LCD screen, it uses 15watts while operating.
That looks pretty interesting. I’m not clear about the monitor though. Do you need to buy one? We only have lap tops right now so no separate monitors. The one good thing about Starlink for me is that I can watch you-tube on my television. That wasn’t possible before.
RPi uses HDMI connection to your TV. RPi4 used an adapter from the large tv hdmi, to micro HDMI. RPi3b+ uses the same size HDMI as the tv.
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The RaspberryPi, is just a circuit board, you need to buy everything else. keyboard/mouse, monitor, cables, harddrive/sd card/, power supply and a case, and with the pi 3/4 cooling can help. (I use a small fan from adafruit) (I would recommend getting a usb/sata drive and don’t screw around with an SD card. It is nominally more for a SSD drive and usb/sata adapter, and tons more reliable and faster. )
The RPi is an ARM based computer, which is similar to what your cell phone uses, and probably the “smart” portion of your tv. The worlds fastest supercomputer uses arm, as well as the new Apple M1 chip. It mainly uses Linux operating system. It is free software and almost all open source as in, if you really care to get your hands dirty, you can modify the programs. (I have used linux on x86 exclusively for years.) The RPi does have pins to program electronics controllers with as well. (Unless you need absolute precision for timing in the nanoseconds, you can usually use an RPi to do electronic controls.) since I assume you don’t program much, there are a few gui options like Node-Red available. https://nodered.org/
If you think youtube on the tv is good, you might look at Kodi.
There are a couple of other similar projects you could opt for as well.
The RPi4 is a better hardware architecture. I have a 3 and it struggles to run desktop applications. It just doesn’t have enough ram. For instance, it struggles with 3 browser tabs open, which is due to lack of ram. I have the pi4 with 4gb, and that seems to work better, although I would look at the 8gb model for exclusive desktop use.
They will eventually get a full 64-bit OS for the pi3/4 and deprecate the 32-bit stuff. Right now it is essentially a 64-bit kernel with 32-bit userland and I believe a 32-bit bootloader. Linux would have dropped kernel support for armv6 (which is what the pi zero/1/2 use had it not been for the Pi. Most distributions no longer support armv6. The Pi Foundation is struggling to maintain backwards compatibility, because they started with a chip design that was already 10 years old and they want a single distribution. Not that the old design hasn’t been useful, but there is a fairly serious architecture jump between armv6 and armv7, and the cortex nomenclature which started in armv7 standardized a lot. The caveat is in the single distribution and they eventually have to split it.
You can see the foundation try to change. With the introduction of the ‘pico’ they are trying to get people to quit using zero’s for applications where you can use a microcontroller and also in part to wipe out the 8-bit 5v arduinos. To me, the esp32 series is a better bang for the buck though.
Got it sean, I went back and read your post to Tom. You are selling him on the RPi 4.
I would prefer to see anyone getting one to have as good experience as possible especially when starting from scratch. The pi3 doesn’t have enough ram to not get frustrated doing desktop stuff.
It isn’t a hard sell. I find them useful. He may not. I keep one for development/a kids computer/second backup computer. They are worth looking at though and a handy tool to have for electronics projects. shrugs
I looked this up Raspberry Pi 400 Personal Computer Kit; 4gb of RAM; Broadcom BCM2711; Quad core Cortex-A72 (ARM v8) 64-bit SoC; Built-in - Micro Center
Price is right. Everything else you guys said up there could just as well be said in Swedish. Took me a while to figure out how all the sensors on cars work now. Anything electronic never connected to my brain cells.
What would be your purpose for buying a single board computer?
I use mine to control things (radios, motors).
I also use mine to read sensors.
I also use all the learning tools that come with Raspberry OS (Operating System).
Finally, I use Raspberries to connect with the internet when I need a desk top computer but have zero power. I can plug in my pi and my 12v tv and operate on the web using desktop websites, for a couple hours. This is helpful if I need to do bank transactions/stock trades/ or bill paying online, and it’s a blizzard out.
In other words, during that sweet spot WSHTF, when the power is out and before the cell tower batteries die, you can still get on the internet and rearrange some last minute things before it all goes tits up.
Photo of a remote data radio controlled by a RPi model A
I do all my computing with Raspberries. But there is a learning curve, so not for everybody. If your not into tinkering around (I didn’t use the “play” word 
) with computers it would be best to find something else. I like the freedom of being in some control of this messy world and if I can’t do it with a Raspberry, it ain’t worth doing. Still have a smart phone, though.
If you don’t want to go through the learning curve, best to find something for the masses.
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Still a day to day struggle with Starlink. Drops the connection regularly and not fast most of the time. Actually worse that the Verizon hot spot we used to have and I really detested Verizon. Apparently others have the same experiences and it may have something to do with latitude until they get more satellites in orbit. Apparently it works better the farther north you are.
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That stinks. I thought you were in the midst of all the vineyards. they didn’t spring to pull fiber so you can point a cantenna at their tasting room with free wifi? 
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