I don't use it as a daily driver any more (I did for a bit while traveling, for obvious reasons), but it's been very useful as bench computer. Doesn't take up as much room as a laptop on a desk, has both a USB 2.0 and a USB 3.0 port for serial consoles and data transfers, is proper x86 so I don't have issues with running proprietary flashers on it. I think it's running 18.04 right now because I needed to flash an old Jetson board.
Bench machine makes sense. I have a very locked down MacBook for work and I don't much like macOS - a little Linux machine for my personal stuff that takes up almost no space on office days seems very appealing. I'll see how that goes!