Well boy, let me jump into this thread with my experience. As a pure hobbist, I moved to raspberry 3
And I have forgotten pbp3 and pics. Don't know why arduino never attracted me.
With raspberry and linux I had to learn python language, but now I am happy to have done it! The few project I have put together with this new hardware, are beyond anything I could ever dream last year using pics and pbp3. So, now and then I pop into the forum to see if something new happens but sadly I see less and less activity all the time. What a pity!

Alberto