alt Hacker NewsLinux, or any other full OS is simply a waste of that hardware. It makes no sense at all.
It's a 5 gallon pail of compute which is all used up in OS overhead so you can do a cup of work.
If the job were that small that it fits in the remainder, then you could and should have just used 1 cent hardware instead of 1 dollar hardware.
Many Adafruit boards come with micropython which could also be seen as a waste of resources. Yet for low volume semi pro applications, the ease of development warrants the overhead. Linux has solid network, WiFi, Bluetooth stacks and a rich box of tools that might be very nice to tap into without requiring something as big as an RPi.