I’m running a full version of Ubuntu on my Orange Pi 5 Plus, which is roughly the same as a Raspberry Pi 5 and it runs fine, so that thing could easilly be hardware in same class of power as a Raspberry Pi 5 or entry level intel Mini-PC and run Ubuntu.
That said, it would still be an SBC that costs about $120.
In my experience, a $40 SBC can’t run more than Armbian and would be better off with a lightweight distro running a lighter window manager.
I’m running a full version of Ubuntu on my Orange Pi 5 Plus, which is roughly the same as a Raspberry Pi 5 and it runs fine, so that thing could easilly be hardware in same class of power as a Raspberry Pi 5 or entry level intel Mini-PC and run Ubuntu.
That said, it would still be an SBC that costs about $120.
In my experience, a $40 SBC can’t run more than Armbian and would be better off with a lightweight distro running a lighter window manager.