Could someone please confirm that the Red Brick obviates the need for a Raspberry ?

confirm.

I had a raspi in use, and now I use a Red.

If you ask to replace the raspi by the RED to use TF stuff furthermore, the answer would be yes you can

The RED is my first Linux machine and I am very satisfied, actual the RED has the Linux distro Jessie plus some RED stuff.

In case of the RED all connected Bricks and Bricklet runs over SPI interface instead of USB. Maintenance the RED by Brick Viewer works like a charm.

TNX