VisionFive 2 isn't going to blow the doors off anything but it is very stable with Fedora 40. Also, I can't speak for the Mars, but the VisionFive 2 has NVME and it works fine booting from it with the patches that were accepted for 6.11.
Hopefully it does well and we see some newer versions of the board.
This may be a stupid question, but I have been out of university for a long time. Is $11,260 for a semester?
I am considering taking a 4 credit online course at UND and the price is listed as $384.88 per credit (https://und.edu/academics/online/enroll-anytime/norw101.html , off topic, but I have finished the duolingo norwegian course and am looking for other ways to progress...)
Figuring for 12-15 credits I don't understand where the huge number is coming from. I was also spoiled by doing half my education in the late 90's and the other half on the GI Bill later, so I'm admittedly probably ignorant to how/where they are hitting people with extra fees and so on both then and now.