Interesting, my thought is opposite, that not much has changed - download, unzip, modify (optional), make menuconfig, make, make install, fix grub config, profit. :)
EDIT: it is true however that someone has shown me the steps, I would have wasted a lot of time without their guidance.
Not sure about mac mini, but some old machines might draw considerably more power than rpi. Rpi has a problem with sd cards, but you can make it use them in the read-only mode, in which case rpi becomes a very reliable computing device.
Or not - regardless of what MS employee claimed, Linux terminals performance is more than adequate.
Edit: I am speaking of Linux, not WSL, of course.