I have a VisionFive2 as part of my lab (next to some arm and x86 sbc), with an nvme disk, and it's unbearably slow. It's still useful for testing platform compatibility, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone.
If you're short on money you can pick up full working systems with Core 2 Duo or early i3/i5/i7 CPUs and proper cases and power supplies and hard disks and monitors and keyboards and mice etc for the same price as a bare SBC -- or even for free.
Things no longer supported by Windows or MacOS (and you can't install current versions of software on the old OS versions they do run) run Linux with the latest apps just fine.
ANY Intel Mac ever made (right back to 2005) is better than a Pi 5 and you can just slap an Ubuntu installer on a USB stick and install it and everything Just Works.
For those who for whatever reason specifically want to use RISC-V software, a VisionFive 2 is faster on a per-core basis than Qemu on a PC -- and a lot cheaper and more power efficient unless that PC already exists and is otherwise not doing anything.