I use an app called "iSH" which gives you an x86 Alpine Linux distro and a shell you can play around with. It's pretty useful whenever I need to ssh into something, and if you're patient you can actually do some programming on it with vim or whatever text editor you want. Even clang works!

Even the base tier ipad is more powerful than a raspberry pi which is more than enough for a gui linux.

The ipad pro contains the same chip as the macbooks and comes with 8gb/16gb ram options. It's more powerful than the average Windows laptop.

iPads definitely has enough CPU power for ARM macos, limiting factor is the RAM.

Ah you are probably right, I remembered that being gated behind something but I assumed it was the altstore which was the thing you had to do for full virtualisation.