Not being a *nix is actually not a disadvantage at all in this context. You'd be surprised how little of an OS you actually need, and how inapplicable most libraries designed for PCs are.

In other words, you're thinking like a hobbyist rather than a product designer, or someone making tools for products. That's fine, but realize that embedded development for actual products is a completely different world than hobby raspberry pi hacking. I think the hobbyist embedded development community is awesome, BTW, just rather different than commercial embedded development.