Someone eventually manages to buy a RPi, but you were that lucky one as the RPis are still almost unobtanium almost everywhere. However, a RPi is just the most famous and heavily advertised one among the many Linux capable embedded boards out there, therefore pretty much every project using one can be converted to a similar board from another vendor.
Some alternatives:
https://mangopi.org/mcorer818
https://banana-pi.org/en/core-board-and-kit/
https://pine64.com/product-category/compute-and-ai-modules/
etc.