It’s, thankfully, much easier than it used to be:
- Before there were widely-available alternative OSes the only way to run an OS besides ClockworkPi was to build your own kernel or to shove theirs into another system.
- NVMe wasn’t an option until somewhat recently.
- Before the recent QMK firmware fix, plugging a USB drive into the system would have like a 20% chance of undervolting the keyboard and thus putting it into an unuseable state, meaning you had to go find a keyboard and mouse to plug in too if you needed to do something with that drive you just plugged in.
- An aftermarket diffuser helps a lot with typing comfort.
I’ve said as much in other comments. It’s never been a very polished experience but for the wattage requirements and durability there isn’t anything else that can compete.
One trick I came up with: superglue the USB-C power connector to the motherboard. It’ll loosen and come off over time because the chassis doesn’t sandwich it and keep it flush with the motherboard, so it has wiggle room which you can (unknowingly) widen each time you plug in the cable. It’s not the worst solder job ever if it fully comes off but superglue is a great preventative measure. Don’t get glue in the port! Just around it.
As for age-related maintenance I’ll link this as I think it’ll become more relevant as time goes on:
Charging the uConsole is about the same as charging anything else via USB-C. It’ll take a 500mA or even 200mA trickle but if you’re running it at the same time you might not be able to draw enough watts (2.5W or 1W respectively at those currents) to replenish your battery. For battery health I recommend manually disconnecting your 18650s when the battery is full; I think, only based on behavior I’ve seen from various monitors, that the device may still put wear on the batteries even at 100% instead of doing the occasional top-up but mostly running off the wall like most mobiles do, but I could be wrong. For convenience, I do not and have never done this myself, but once I solder a switch onto my HackerGadgets battery board it should be easy so I may start.