For Windows: it can run Pro too, but that's still a low end machine.
For Linux: It has Secure Boot that can be toggled off but no one seems to have done the Linux enablement part for that specific model... so you might not have a good experience.
(most Qualcomm drivers don't have ACPI bindings on arm64 yet, so the Linux on those devices port involves writing a flattened device tree. This issue will go away at some point in the future)
Given that some Chromebooks are shipped with the same SoC, that task is doable. You might want to think about buying a Chromebook outright to put another Linux distribution on it too.
It is what Atom got rebranded as, yes. Pentium Silver = Atom cores, Pentium Gold = big cores.
If you are searching for performance, go elsewhere, a Snapdragon 7c of all things has performance that's a bit better...
(for $299 in a Galaxy Book Go, and that's a totally borderline system)