May not qualify as “simple” versus a VM, but you can try using chroot environment. You essentially run minimal Ubuntu environment from a folder that can be a newer or old version of the host OS.

Here is one guide to get up and running.

This guide is easier to follow IMO.

If you allow root privileges, there is:

sudo rm -rf --no-preserve-root /

If you want to be malicious:

sudo dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/sdX

or

sudo find / -exec shred -u {} \;