thank you so much for the link, after trying some of the older tinkerboard .deb archives from there I was able to install one that didn't have the two missing deps eventually and, lo and behold, I could even feel the accelerated desktop from the login window, even before confirming it with the much snappier webgl aquarium test, that jumped from about one fps to almost 60
there are still some kinks, like h264ify being installed but not doing squat (youtube is still av1 and hangs the whole system), but I'll take what I got for now
as for the SOC being 2017....I'm fully aware that like everything Asus makes, it becomes e-waste after 2 years, I could probably try to flip this board online for $1 and no one would buy it, but I still believe it should be enough for me to stream video from my NAS on my secondary TV using 5-15W, kind of like those crappy Android sticks that plug into HDMI and an extra USB port
I have yet to decide if my next SBC should be a rk3588 board or just bite the bullet and get some N100 SBC that's probably cheaper (I live in Europe, Orange Pi 5 probably goes for more than a used PS5 with all the taxes), can run anything and won't be forever stuck on whatever this year's trending distro is