Because Im currently typing this on mine (1 GiB, android install) and everything is (very surprisingly) rock solid – page loading is very smooth, youtube playback is smooth as well (it can even play 4k videos no problem) and even gaming works flawlessly well (Haven`t went too far beyond PS1 games, but from PS1 and under it plays everything really well.).
In short – It delivers a desktop experience at the expense of almost nothing with the power draw at that same level – 1W (best case scenario) to 3W(worst case scenario).
Im not an Android expert to be honest (Been fiddling with Linux for some time however, which made my “transition” from 0 to “less-terrible” a rather pleasing one) but I’d say… no. There might be some alternatives to certain Linux-restricted software that might work “out of the box” tho (Like AdGuard instead of pihole) and maybeeeeeee some “voodo magic” can be done with
adb(Which is the closest you’ll get of a “Android package manager” of sorts since it allows you to install packages remotely and some tricky things I’m still not aware about.).Unless you really, REALLY need to tweak the kernel with some turbonerd stuff which is completely off my line of knowledge or some other similar stuff… then I’d say that Android will give you an “acceptable” Linux experience.