Right, but the fact that running it on a Pi with Linux is the "much more pragmatic solution" is already ruling out about 90% of the US.
Keep in mind that Home Assistant provides ready-made images that behave like an appliance and can auto-update. In fact, it doesn't even give you a shell/SSH by default and such access is discouraged.
Thus the Linux/RaspberryPi underlying complexity is irrelevant to the user - the "complexity" is to dd/BalenaEtcher/etc a downloaded file to an SD card, put the card in the Pi and connect it to power. From there it's available over the network and can be configured through a web browser.
It works out of the box, is very easy to source (hell some brick & mortar stores sell them), has very good Linux support due to its popularity, and makes up a large part of the install base meaning HA support for it is unlikely to get deprecated.