Sorry for being pedantic here, but despite lack of video hardware I would argue it has a lot more in common with the PI than an Arduino. It runs Yocto Linux and you can pretty much use the full suite of Linux tools to program it.
That's fair, I didn't mean to suggest that it wasn't a general-purpose computer running Linux, just that it wasn't really built to be used as a desktop. That said, I'd personally choose an RPi Zero W (which isn't much larger, costs 1/5th the price, and can drive a monitor, if you need it to).
It could also be run headlessly and combined with a Pi. The Edison running an X client (server) or RDP server, the Pi connecting into it.