tl;dr - get X86 hardware, not ARM.

Most ARM boards have lacking software support and run vendor supplied patched distributions or kernels that are out of date (or at least will be after a short period of lagging updates).

If you wanted to run a robust and patched up ARM Linux distribution for networked use, you usually want timely security patches, and this requirement narrows down the options a lot.

Even the best board-specific distros (like Raspbian) lag in the security updates dept so for many uses you want to look at which boards are officially supported by mainstream distros.