I have a GPD Mini, the very first preproduction one.
Stock Ubuntu runs just fine since about 24.04 or 23.10 (do not remember). Keyboard is fine. Trackpoint instead of a cheap trackpad which is great. Touch screen.
And incredibly mind-bogglingly slow eMMC storage. Like, makes it impossible to use.
So as cute as it is, I haven't found any use for it for the last ~10 years that I own it. Maybe I have used it for emergency ssh from the mountain hike once or twice.
maybe try a linux distro like tinycore or porteus? it puts the rootfs in ram so things run insanely fast, and sync changes to disk before shutdown