Whelp, the lattepanda v1 (4GB) is… interesting. It’s slower than the A06 in raw compiling (two less cores). It comes with a full windows 10 install that was miserably slow until I ran win10 debloater and rebooted several times. Hdparm reports 155.10 MB/sec for the internal emmc. Of course, the convenience comes from the standard x86 compatibility. It has a full uefi bios, but is very finicky when it comes to reboots and resets.
I was able to install several types of linuxes. The install process is painfully slow. Looks like most people use ubuntu iso’s that are tweaked by 'linuxium" to work better with the atom chipset. He offers a script that alters ubuntu iso’s. I ran his script on lubuntu-21.10-desktop-amd64.iso and installed it. It’s useable, but not instant like today’s laptops (obviously.)
There are odd tweaks that need to be run here and there, like telling xrandr to turn off the CSI-1 display, otherwise you get a desktop stretched into oblivion.
Temperatures are surprising… They hover at 40-50c with no cooling. And stay low even during all-core compiling or youtube video viewing. Youtube fullscreen pulls a continuous 60%-80% cpu load.
It’s a very useable 1080p linux or Win10 system with some setup. I’m wondering if performance would be better with a 1280x480 lcd attached over a 1920x1080 monitor.
Honestly, the stock A06 with manjaro sway or xfce blows it away. I’ve been trying to learn sway on devterm, and it just provides the perfect balance of use and space available. I probably won’t start a project to hack x86 into the A06. Just not worth it.
If anyone wants a super-cheap atom-based laptop[derpterm] to fart around with, I highly recommend this cheap $200 chinese knockoff (evaluation bios) that amazon ships one-day. 6GB memory. 128GB SSD. IPS 1920×1080 screen. UEFI bios. (the lattepanda 4G was $189 shipped.) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B09L6VNZ29/