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You can buy Intel NUC that does way more than wimpy RPI. Remember, RPI is not opensource which is how most people see them as - aka, a feel good company. It is as proprietary as Intel in the critical areas (processor, sdk and bunch of binary blobs).

RPI really doesn't belong in this type of a device you're describing.

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In my case being open source is a bonus - what I want is an on-premise modern linux environment that is economical to leave running 24/7, executes reasonably fast (including disk IO), and secure (auto update etc).

I solved that by buying a passively cooled baytrail nano-ITX motherboard 5 or so years ago, and running Arch linux on it. At the time, pis were way slower at disk IO and encryption/hashing. Maybe the pi 4 is fast enough now, but I suspect the baytrail is still holding up favorably.

What would?

PinePhone.

https://pine64.org

New batch due soon.

Upvote for the interesting idea (fellow PinePhone user), but see my other comment - The RockPro64 (also from Pine64) is probably a better fit since it's a SBC with PCIe and thus the ability to plug in NVMe which the OP was asking for.

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