Ah ok. Well I don't to that any more on Linux, than I do on Windows.

So proper shutdowns and reboots both on Windows and Linux, and life is grand.

Well, with the fact that’s it’s only purchasable via steam, and they recommend not to use windows on it, I am skipping it. With the money I saved up not buying anything here, I got myself a switch! Heard many good things about them, and there are a fair few games I want to try out. Maybe some time in the future I will upgrade the gpd win 2 to the 3.

Yeah, good ol' Wirth's law. No, there are some games that do, but assuming it applied universally is incorrect. Because of wirth's law, the moment any of them do, someone makes sure to change that. That's why you need to re-read. I proposed a separate memory for GPU. Yeah, tbh, I expect this thing to go horribly and quickly turn into only allowing games that aim for it. In other words, there may even be some games that are compatible, but won't be allowed to run on it. That's the way these things usually turn out as time goes on.

This is one of the many reasons using NTFS for a shared Windows/Linux partition is a bad idea. UDF would be a much better option.

(of course, the best option is not using Windows at all)

UDF would have the same issue. If you hibernate one OS without unmounting it, and you then boot the other OS and ount the drive read-write, then you could have file system corruption.

The ideal solution would be to not boot into the other OS after hibernating one OS, and it doesn't matter what OSes or filesystems are in play.

Problems with separate memory for GPU:
* Less flexible, as if either CPU or GPU needs to use large amounts of memory and the other does not, one can't (easily) use the other type of memory.
* Slower CPU<->GPU transfers. If memory is shared, then the transfer can be fast, and in some cases even be a no-op. (For example, one could map GPU memory as CPU addressable with no overhead at all; the graphics library would just return a pointer and not have to do any copying of memory.) With separate GPU memory, the data will need to be transferred, which is slow. (This is the main reason why integrated graphics could run faster than dedicated graphics for (real) work loads. Note that software renderers like LLVMpipe have this advantage, but are considerably slower than integrated graphics.)

The memory controller worries about the RAM. You'd have a separate memory controller and even a separate RAM slot. I mean, sure, you can't just go into your bios or OS settings and change the value, but it would solve alot of bottle-neck issues. If they did this, you could still have your external slots and gain some of the benefits of the APU, too. The problem is we're still using in and out instructions to mess with the GPU, and the GPU has to wait for other DMA'd devices like the sound card, the network card, etc, to quit playing around at their lower clock rates. I don't think you understand what i'm proposing. You see, STM32 (ARM CPUs) have slow ram and fast ram. Use this image for reference and look for the grey pins labled A# (there should be 16 of them). It's been a while since i touched mine, but i recall that when you start writing to address 0x60000000 the other pins (PB) go active. So if you wrote 1 to address 0x60000000, PB0 goes hot, the others stay cold, and the PA pins are cold. If you write 7 to 0x60000006, PA1, PA2, PB0, PB1, and PB2 all go hot, and the others stay cold. The implications of this is rather fascinating, acutally. It means, by writing to an address, you set the PB pins with the data, and that address (-0x6000000) will then set the PA pins accordingly, allowing you to set a multitude of pins with fewer instructions.

This means that these boards, without any modification, can actually share memory with a GPU that's external. Moreover, if, say, you had an external redirector of some sort, you could use pin PA0 to specify that it goes to the video memory or the current ram. So, without any modifications to the CPU, this can be redirected to separate RAM. The practical outlook of this is that, since the x86 currently has a 40bit address bus (it doesn't use the full 64bits), you could reserve addresses 0x8000000000 and above to be for VRAM and limit that machine to that amount of RAM for non-video memory. That still affords you 512 gigabytes of RAM. Obviously, this standard wouldn't last forever, but we could always move it as appropriate and throw this on the OS to understand that. Then you can thread the memory controller with the slow one going into wait any time 0x8000000000 or higher is selected (which is a single bit for it to look for). Underneath the hood, that's what these memory controllers are for, anyway. Now with some even smarter fanangling, you can set the memory controllers to talk to one another, so that if the disk is DMA'd, you can load stuff directly to VRAM with the CPU temporarily locked out (and this wouldn't happen very often, of course). Once the transfer is complete, the memory controllrs quit talking to one another and go back to their multi-threaded mode and let the CPU control them independently again. As far as far as CPU and almost all code is concerned, nothing changed.

If you wanted to play older games (without much GPU usage) or the earlier gen systems, chromebooks seem to be a decent choice. I found an HP one i have is an Intel rather than ARM processor... Makes me wonder how much the windows license is since the one i just picked up was only $50.

Though the chromebooks are rather anemic for a lot of things... So not sure how much to compare...

Don’t you need rubber gloves to use a chrome book? I mean to stop Google scraping your dna?

No, not for a shared data partition using UDF.
But if you were writing about the actual Windows system partition, I fail to see why you would want to access to it from Linux.

It looks like you can totally replace the OS, i might just do that. I might have to look into the firewall to see if i can block as much as possible otherwise, but other than the book is connected to some odd IP address it gives google no real information so i'm not sure.

edit: I have replaced the OS and aside from the Realtime Clock being off, it's a decent enough machine. Nice running Slax natively.

While I may not be in the market for the device, it does look like a cool little portable PC. As said before, this may very well kill its competitors in this niche market.

Anyway, here's a fun little vid from Linus Tech Tips with him going overboard on all the different things he tested.

Sorry I missed that earlier. Why don't they recommend using Windows on it? Was it that "Windows 10 doesn't have a gaming-friendly sleep mode where you can pause and resume your game at any point of time" (about which I personally don't care) or something else?

Of course, I am unsure if Windows 11 refuses to install to the system, but that deadline comes in 2025. I guess it is good if at that point you can use Linux on it, if you are still using the system at that point (I probably would as long as its battery still works or can be easily replaced, as I tend to use easily over a decade old laptops in everyday use as well).

While Linux is ok, I still wish it is pretty much a generic micro-PC where you can decide yourself what to install on it, Windows included. Sometimes I might want to use Windows on it instead, depending on the games (or other stuff) I am going to run on it.

Just yesterday while watching this Steam Deck video below, I was thinking how the Aya Neo deveopers and backers must have been like "Oooooh shiiiit..." with the Steam Deck announcement... Feeling something might have made it obsolete before it was even properly released...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SElZABp5M3U

Aya Neo also seems quite good, but it appears that as far as the hardware goes, Steam Deck offers more for a cheaper price...

GPD Win 3 interests me mostly because it has an integrated keyboard which makes it more a portable computer than just a portable gaming device. Which I like, and would end up using those devices mostly anyway, only occasionally playing on them.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1Kly8AyNPU

yep it will , why would anyone buy anything else than this

Oh, welcome to the club then. I am now learning which Switch-exclusive games to purchase for my Switch, in order to get rid of buyer's remorse, and also learning about modding the console to install e.g. Android or some Linux on it, in order to run homebrew games, emulators etc., kinda making it more like those "portable PCs". I think my unit is too new with too new firmware though, to be modded...

So far I have only Minecraft for Switch (which was a good purchase as my son plays it almost daily since last Xmas, good bang for buck apparently), and I have this odd crave to buy the Switch version of The Witcher 3, just to marvel how Switch can run it... but apparently those handheld PCs can run the PC version of TW3 quite well as well...

Diablo 3, hmmm... No interest in buying the online-only PC version, maybe a Switch version then, if it runs also offline?
GPD Win 3 has an integrated keyboard, making it a true portable PC, not just a portable gaming device...

Other than that, Steam Deck does currently seem to offer the most hardware and performance for the price.