I’m fine with GNU radio, once I have it installed that is!
If pluto is more DIY than Red Pitaya... hmmm. However, the stuff I was doing with the Red Pitaya was custom embedded code, I didn’t use any of the apps. I just found the software build experience around the Red Pitaya to be extremely painful, which is a shame because the hardware itself is reasonably sound.
Anyway, I got the oscilloscope application up and running reasonably quickly.
I’d recommend that they forget about the networking and serial stuff during the initial walkthrough, it just clutters everything for the newcomer. At least they seen to keep old versions of documentation and software available which is more than can be said for Red Pitaya.