It is highly unlikely you will be pioneering on x86 deployments as well.

It's an ordinary x86 board that can run any x86 Linux distribution. You are vastly more likely to be the first person trying to deploy any particular package on a Pi than an x86 computer.

So with this board, I can just plug in a LibreELEC image and start watching digital media on my TV from my sofa, while controlling it with my regular TV remote via CEC?

That's the kind of thing that the Raspberry Pi's combination of consistency and popularity does provide.

No, but you can run multiple docker containers on it for years without the fear of your SD card failing from excess writes as it uses standard M.2 SSDs

If a CEC compatible media player is what you need, then the Pi is a good choice. Or if you need GPIO.

Otherwise they're horribly overpriced compared to N97/N100 minipcs, with the exception of the Zeros.

I haven't had any issues with SD cards failing in Raspberry Pis.

But I've only got about 14 machine-years of using them so far. On a long-enough timeline, I'm sure that failure is inevitable.

The various Android phones I've had over the past decade and a half, however: Now those have killed some SD cards.

YMMV.

(BRB. I think imma dump RetroPie onto an SD card, plug in a PS3 controller, and do some trouble-free some vintage gaming on the Raspberry Pi that was doing media center duties with CEC a minute ago. If I have time, and it seems fun-enough, I'll get the controller working with Bluetooth.

And then I think I'll plug the LibreELEC card back in and crash out on the couch watching a movie.)