Been there, done that with the tiny RP2350 boards. In my experience, the Pimoroni boards are among the best because they have enough of everything to be useful. Real onboard PSRAM on a proper bus makes a big difference.
I’ve written a lot of CircuitPython programs for these boards, and I tried to share some of that work here, but that became its own issue.
The biggest problem I kept running into is that the web keeps moving forward with HTTPS security. Pico-class boards struggle with modern certificates, redirects, and TLS memory requirements. Even when you think you are using plain HTTP, many sites now redirect to HTTPS, and that can consume more SRAM than the board realistically has available.
I got tired of fighting that battle. At one point I was using a Raspberry Pi 4 as an HTTPS proxy just so my Pico projects could work reliably.
So for me, the LuckFox Lyra in the PicoCalc is not about avoiding the fun. It is about having enough resources to build the projects I actually want to build. As you can see in other threads, I’m not the only one exploring Linux on the PicoCalc.
To each his own, of course. I’m just finding the LuckFox route more rewarding for my use case. I hope your projects go well too.
As a side note the Luckfox Lyra on PicoCalc thread has almost twice as many views as the picoware thread with a comperable number of posts.