Hey Tripp. We are all blazing a trail here with this new device and the things that can be done with it. Some of these things may “brick” your device, as in it remains useless and unbootable from that point forward, (or if you are lucky, need to jump through a lot of hoops to recover). That being said, know the risks you take while trying these things out. The first key question is, why do you want Ubuntu installed? What use case or every day life problems are you trying to solve? If you are good with the answers, then proceed but know there are risks involved and they are yours to assume, not me or anyone else’s.
In premise however, this should work. The advantage of running it on a bootable Flash Card or USB would be to test if and how Ubuntu (or any other Linux flavor) works on it. If it does not, dismount or shut down and reboot the device, no harm done. Assuming the it is working properly, it would sense alternate drive on the device and at the same time will allow you to install directly from the bootable Flash Card or USB. If you are familiar with Ubuntu you should be familiar with this. Also, make sure you have a key board, mouse, and monitor hooked up, preferably wired (not wireless), and working on the Android software it shipped with. This way you do not have to worry about wireless drivers flaking out on you during your initial tests.
Although I would take the route I outlined above, there are plenty of examples similar out there like running Ubuntu on a Raspberry Pi, and the LinksStar-H68K is a lot more powerful and has the specs to handle it. For a similar use-case with installation on a Raspberry Pi, see below:
Do your homework. Good luck and let me what you decide and if it works.